Related papers: Kinks in two-phase lipid bilayer membranes
Membranes are an important subject of study in physical chemistry and biology. They can be considered as material surfaces with a surface energy depending on the curvature tensor. Usually, mathematical models developed in the literature…
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…
Inverse bicontinuous cubic phases are ubiquitous in lipid-water mixtures and consist of a lipid bilayer forming a cubic minimal surface, thereby dividing space into two cubic networks of water channels. For small hydrocarbon chain lengths,…
We present a simple and computationally efficient coarse-grained and solvent-free model for simulating lipid bilayer membranes. In order to be used in concert with particle-based reaction-diffusion simulations, the model is purely based on…
Integral membrane proteins deform the surrounding bilayer creating long-ranged forces that influence distant proteins. These forces can be attractive or repulsive, depending on the proteins' shape, height, contact angle with the bilayer, as…
A theory of a lateral stress relaxation in a fluid bilayer membrane under a step-like pressure pulse is proposed. It is shown theoretically that transfer of lipid molecules into a strained region may lead to a substantial decrease of the…
A novel two-leaflet description of lipid membranes is proposed. Within its framework, phase separation phenomena in multicomponent biological membranes are analyzed. As we show, interactions between the leaflets tend to suppress macroscopic…
Animal cells are both encapsulated and subdivided by lipid bilayer membranes. Beyond just acting as boundaries, these membranes' shapes influence the function of cells and their compartments. Physically, membranes are two-dimensional fluids…
Biomembranes are thin capacitors with the unique feature of displaying phase transitions in a physiologically relevant regime. We investigate the voltage and lateral pressure dependence of their capacitance close to their chain melting…
After a brief introduction to several variational problems in the study of shapes of thin thickness structures, we deal with variational problems on 2-dimensional surface in 3-dimensional Euclidian space by using exterior differential…
Current fluctuations in pure lipid membranes have been shown to occur under the influence of transmembrane electric fields (electroporation) as well as a result from structural rearrangements of the lipid bilayer during phase transition…
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…
We use a simple and efficient computer model to investigate the physical properties of bilayer membranes. The amphiphilic molecules are modeled as short rigid trimers with finite range pair interactions between them. The pair potentials…
The conformational free energy landscape of a system is a fundamental thermodynamic quantity of importance particularly in the study of soft matter and biological systems, in which the entropic contributions play a dominant role. While…
Branching of bilayer membranes appear in the inverted hexagonal phase as well as in metastable states of the lamellar phase such as membrane fusion intermediates. A method for estimating the line tension of the branching junction is…
Geometric continuum models for fluid lipid membranes are considered using classical field theory, within a covariant variational approach. The approach is cast as a higher-derivative Lagrangian formulation of continuum classical field…
Understanding how electric fields destabilize biological membranes is important for electroporation-based technologies and bioelectronic interfaces. However, theoretical descriptions of this phenomenon remain fragmented. Existing theories…
A minimalist simulation model for lipid bilayers is presented. Each lipid is represented by a flexible chain of beads in implicit solvent. The hydrophobic effect is mimicked through an intermolecular pair potential localized at the…
We report a numerical evidence of the discontinuous transition of a tethered membrane model which is defined within a framework of the membrane elasticity of Helfrich. Two kinds of phantom tethered membrane models are studied via the…
It is well known that lipid membranes respond to a threshold transmembrane electric field through a reversible mechanism called electroporation, where hydrophilic water pores form across the membrane, an effect widely used in biological…