Related papers: Monolayer curvature stabilizes nanoscale raft doma…
We discuss different mechanisms for curvature-induced domain formation in multicomponent lipid membranes and present a theoretical model that allows us to study the interplay between the domains. The model represents the membrane by two…
A model of lipid bilayers made of a mixture of two lipids with different average compositions on both leaflets, is developed. A Landau hamiltonian describing the lipid-lipid interactions on each leaflet, with two lipidic fields $\psi_1$ and…
Plasma membranes appear as deformable systems wherein molecules are free to move and diffuse giving rise to condensed microdomains (composed of ordered lipids, transmembrane proteins and cholesterol) surrounded by disordered lipid…
This article summarizes a variety of physical mechanisms proposed in the literature, which can generate micro- and nanodomains in multicomponent lipid bilayers and biomembranes. It mainly focusses on lipid-driven mechanisms that do not…
Membrane organization is essential for cellular functions such as signal transduction and membrane trafficking. A major challenge is to understand the lateral heterogeneous structures in membranes and membrane fluidity in the presence of…
Morphological transitions of phase separation associated with the asymmetry of lipid composition were investigated using micrometer-sized vesicles of lipid bilayers made from a lipid mixture. The complete macro-phase-separated morphology…
Ever since the raft model for biomembranes has been proposed, the traditional view of biomembranes based on the fluid-mosaic model has been altered. In the raft model, dynamical heterogeneities in multi-component lipid bilayers play an…
Liquid-liquid phase separation is ubiquitous in suspensions of nanoparticles, proteins and colloids. With a few notable exceptions, surface-tension-minimizing liquid droplets in bulk suspensions continuously coalesce, increasing in size…
Lipid bilayer membranes are not uniform and clusters of lipids in a more ordered state exist within the generally disorder lipid milieu of the membrane. These clusters of ordered lipids microdomains are now referred to as lipid rafts.…
Multicomponent lipid mixtures exhibit complex phase behavior, including coexistence of nanoscopic fluid phases in ternary mixtures mimicking the composition of the outer leaflet of mammalian plasma membrane. The physical mechanisms…
Lipid bilayer membranes below their main transition have two tilt order parameters, corresponding to the two monolayers. These two tilts may be strongly coupled to membrane shape but only weakly coupled to each other. We discuss some…
Cellular membranes are a heterogeneous mix of lipids, proteins and small molecules. Special groupings of saturated lipids and cholesterol form a liquid-ordered phase, known as `lipid rafts,' serving as platforms for signaling, trafficking…
We consider the formation of finite-size domains in lipid bilayers consisting of saturated and hybrid lipids. First, we describe a monolayer model that includes a coupling between a compositional scalar field and a two-dimensional vectorial…
We investigate how an externally imposed curvature influences lipid segregation on two-phase-coexistent membranes. We show that the bending-modulus contrast of the two phases and the curvature act together to yield a reduced effective line…
We describe a simple coarse-grained model which is suited to study lipid layers and their phase transitions. Lipids are modeled by short semiflexible chains of beads with a solvophilic head and a solvophobic tail component. They are forced…
Rafts, or functional domains, are transient nano- or mesoscopic structures in the plasma membrane and are thought to be essential for many cellular processes such as signal transduction, adhesion, trafficking and lipid/protein sorting.…
Lipid rafts are heterogeneous dynamic lipid domains of the cell membranes that are involved in several biological processes, like protein and lipids specific transport and signaling. Our understanding of lipid raft formation is still…
Giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) composed of as few as three lipid species can phase separate into small-scale lipid domains with stripes and dots patterns. These patterns have been experimentally characterized in terms of how their size…
In experiments on model membranes, a formation of large domains of different lipid composition is readily observed. However, no such phase separation is observed in the membranes of intact cells. Instead, a structure of small transient…
We propose a model that accounts for budding behavior of domains in lipid bilayers, where each of the bilayer leaflets has a coupling between its local curvature and local lipid composition. The compositional asymmetry between the two…