Related papers: Phase transitions in biological membranes
The phase diagram of an incompressible fluid membrane subject to quantum and thermal fluctuations is calculated exactly in a large number of dimensions of configuration space. At zero temperature, a crumpling transition is found at a…
The size and shape of a large variety of polymeric particles, including biological cells, star polymers, dendrimes, and microgels, depend on the applied stresses as the particles are extremely soft. In high-density suspensions these…
Cell plasma membranes display a dramatically rich structural complexity characterized by functional sub-wavelength domains with specific lipid and protein composition. Under favorable experimental conditions, patterned morphologies can also…
We propose a model describing the phase behavior of two-component membranes consisting of binary mixtures of electrically charged and neutral lipids. We take into account the structural phase transition (main-transition) of the hydrocarbon…
In the proximity of melting transitions of artificial and biological membranes fluctuations in enthalpy, area, volume and concentration are enhanced. This results in domain formation, changes of the elastic constants, changes in…
In hydrodynamic descriptions of lipid bilayers, the membrane is often approximated as being impermeable to the surrounding, solute-containing fluid. However, biological and in vitro lipid membranes are influenced by their permeability and…
Biomembranes wrapping cells and organelles are not only the partitions that separate the insides but also dynamic fields for biological functions accompanied by membrane shape changes. In this review, we discuss the spatiotemporal patterns…
A bio tissue model consisting of multilayer spherical cells including four nested radial domains (nucleus, nuclear membrane, cytoplasm and plasma membrane) is worked out to derive the cell heating dynamics in presence of membrane…
Biological membranes undergo noticeable thermal fluctuations at physiological temperatures. When two membranes approach each other, they hinder the out of plane fluctuations of the other. This hindrance leads to an entropic repulsive force…
We investigate the permeability of lipid membranes for fluorescence dyes and ions. We find that permeability reaches a maximum close to the chain melting transition of the membranes. Close to transitions, fluctuations in area and…
We study the indentation of a free-standing lipid membrane suspended over a nanopore on a hydrophobic substrate by means of molecular dynamics simulations. We find that in the course of indentation, the membrane bends at the point of…
How internal forces are transduced into motion through soft, fluid membranes remains a fundamental question in the study of active systems. To investigate this coupling, we develop a minimal system consisting of a single ferromagnetic…
We study the effect of membrane proteins on the shape, composition and thermodynamic stability of the surrounding membrane. When the coupling between membrane composition and curvature is strong enough the nearby composition and shape both…
It is known that lipid membranes become permeable in their melting regime. In microscopic conductance measurements on black lipid membranes one finds that conduction takes place via quantized events closely resembling those reported for…
It is well known that at the gel-liquid phase transition temperature a lipid bilayer membrane exhibits an increased ion permeability. We analyze the quantized currents in which the increased permeability presents itself. The open time…
All cells must keep time to consistently perform vital biological functions. To that end, the coupling and interrelatedness of diverse subsecond events in the complex cellular environment, such as protein folding or translation rates,…
Recent research has shown that motile cells can adapt their mode of propulsion to the mechanical properties of the environment in which they find themselves--crawling in some environments while swimming in others. The latter can involve…
Whether live cell membranes show miscibility phase transitions (MPTs), and if so, how they fluctuate near the transitions remain outstanding unresolved issues in physics and biology alike. Motivated by these questions we construct a generic…
The incredible thermo-mechanical properties of biological materials arise from the microscopic scale due to a complex hierarchical mechanism, regulated by microinstabilities at the molecular level. The description of such complex structures…
In the framework of a phase field model of a single cell crawling on a substrate, we investigate how the properties of the cell membrane affect the shape and motility of the cell. Since the membrane influences the cell dynamics on multiple…