Related papers: Revisiting the entropic force between fluctuating …
Biological membranes are dynamic surfaces whose shape and function are critically influenced by protein inclusions (PIs). While membrane deformations induced by PIs have been extensively studied in the small-deformation regime, a variety of…
We consider how membrane fluctuations can modify the miscibility of lipid mixtures, that is to say how the phase diagram of a boundary-constrained membrane is modified when the membrane is allowed to fluctuate freely in the case of zero…
A theory is presented for the membrane junction separation induced by the adhesion between two biomimetic membranes that contain two different types of anchored junctions (receptor/ligand complexes). The analysis shows that several…
Computer simulations and theory are used to systematically investigate how the effective force between two big colloidal spheres in a sea of small spheres depends on the basic (big-small and small-small) interactions. The latter are modeled…
An elastic membrane with embedded nematic molecules is considered as a model of anisotropic fluid membrane with internal ordering. By considering the geometric coupling between director field and membrane curvature, the nematic texture is…
Computer simulations are used to characterize the entropic force of one or more polymers tethered to the tip of a hard conical object that interact with a nearby hard flat surface. Pruned-enriched-Rosenbluth-method (PERM) Monte Carlo…
Pressure-jump initiated time-resolved x-ray diffraction studies of dynamics of the hydration of the hexagonal phase in biological membranes show that (i) the relaxation of the unit cell spacing is non-exponential in time; (ii) the Bragg…
Cells modify their volume in response to changes in osmotic pressure but it is usually assumed that other active shape variations do not involve significant volume fluctuations. Here we report experiments demonstrating that water transport…
Using analytical calculations and computer simulations we consider both the lateral diffusion of a membrane protein and the fluctuation spectrum of the membrane in which the protein is embedded. The membrane protein interacts with the…
In biological settings membranes typically interact locally with other membranes or the extracellular matrix in the exterior, as well as with internal cellular structures such as the cytoskeleton. Characterization of the dynamic properties…
Whether intentionally introduced to exert control over particles and macroscopic objects, such as for trapping or cooling, or whether arising from the quantum and thermal fluctuations of charges in otherwise neutral bodies, leading to…
We study the adhesive contact between elastic solids with randomly rough, self affine fractal surfaces. We present molecular dynamics (MD) simulation results for the interfacial stress distribution and the wall-wall separation. We compare…
A very common strategy to penetrate the cell membrane and access the internal compartment, consists of using sharp tips or nano needles. However recent experiments of cell penetration by atomic force microscopy tips show, contrary to…
At finite concentrations of reacting molecules, kinetics of diffusion-controlled reactions is affected by intra-reactant interactions. As a result, multi-particle reaction statistics cannot be deduced from single-particle results. Here we…
We examine the nonequilibrium nature of two-phase fluid displacements in a quasi-two-dimensional medium (a model open fracture), in the presence of localized constrictions ("defects"), from a theoretical and numerical standpoint. Our…
We investigate the steady states and dynamical instabilities resulting from ``particles'' depositing on (fusion) and pinching off (fission) a fluid membrane. These particles could be either small lipid vesicles or isolated proteins. In the…
We calculate the induced elastic-interaction between pointwise membrane inclusions that locally interact up to quadratic order with the membrane curvature tensor. For isotropic inclusions, we recover the usual interaction proportional to…
An elastic string embedded between rigid walls is simulated by means of the density-matrix renormalization group. The string collides against the walls owing to the quantum-mechanical zero-point fluctuations. Such ``quantum entropic''…
We derive the expression of the stress tensor for one and two-component lipid membranes with density and composition inhomogeneities. We first express the membrane stress tensor as a function of the free-energy density by means of the…
A phenomenological Landau elasticity for the shape, dilation, and lipid-tilt of bilayer membranes is developed. The shape mode couples with the sum of the monolayers' tilt, while the dilation mode couples with the difference of the…