Related papers: Interfacial Stresses on Droplet Interface Bilayers…
Many of the cell membrane vital functions are achieved by the self-organization of the proteins and biopolymers embedded in it. The protein dynamics are in part determined by its drag. A large number of these proteins can polymerize to form…
We present a simple, and physically motivated, coarse-grained model of a lipid bilayer, suited for micron scale computer simulations. Each ~25 nm^2 patch of bilayer is represented by a spherical particle. Mimicking forces of hydrophobic…
The interaction potential between supported floating bilayers has been determined by grazing incidence specular and off-specular scattering using synchrotron radiation. Our measurements demonstrate that floating bilayers are significantly…
We review recent computer simulation studies of undulating lipid bilayers. Theoretical interpretations of such fluctuating membranes are most commonly based on generalized Helfrich-type elastic models, with additional contributions of local…
Directly examining subcellular mechanics whilst avoiding excessive strain of a live cell requires the precise control of light stress on very small areas, which is fundamentally difficult. Here we use a glass nanopipet out of contact with…
Red blood cells (RBCs) sustain mechanical stresses associated with microcirculatory flow through ATP-driven plasma membrane flickering. This is an active phenomenon driven by motor proteins that regulate interactions between the spectrin…
The process of self-morphing in curved surfaces found in nature, such as with the growth of flowers and leaves, has generated interest in the study of self-morphing bilayers, which has been used in many soft robots or switchers. However,…
We propose a very simple but realistic enough model which allows to include a large number of molecules in molecular dynamics MD simulations of these bilayers, but nevertheless taking into account molecular charge distributions, flexible…
Viscosity is a key property of cell membranes that controls mobility of embedded proteins and membrane remodeling. Measuring it is challenging because existing approaches involve complex experimental designs and/or models, and the…
Cells within biological tissue are constantly subjected to dynamic mechanical forces. Measuring the internal stress of tissues has proven crucial for our understanding of the role of mechanical forces in fundamental biological processes…
We study, using dissipative particle dynamics simulations, the effect of active lipid flip-flop on model fluid bilayer membranes. We consider both cases of symmetric as well as asymmetric flip-flops. Symmetric flip-flop leads to a steady…
Measurements with an atomic force microscope (AFM) offer a direct way to probe elastic properties of lipid bilayer membranes locally: provided the underlying stress-strain relation is known, material parameters such as surface tension or…
A mesoscopic coarse-grain model for computationally-efficient simulations of biomembranes is presented. It combines molecular dynamics simulations for the lipids, modeled as elastic chains of beads, with multiparticle collision dynamics for…
We study the elastic response of bilayer membranes with fixed projected area to both stretching and shape deformations. A surface tension is associated to each of these deformations. By using model amphiphilic membranes and computer…
Diffusion in cell membranes is not just simple two-dimensional Brownian motion, but typically depends on the timescale of the observation. The physical origins of this anomalous sub-diffusion are unresolved, and model systems capable of…
Artificial bilayer lipid membranes (BLMs), along with patch-clamped membranes, are frequently used for functional analyses of membrane proteins. In both methods, the electric properties of membranes are characterized by only one parameter,…
Transient electric fields across cell bilayer membranes can lead to electroporation, as well as to cell fusion, and have been extensively studied. We find that transmembrane electric fields similar to those in cells can lead to a massive,…
We investigate the convergence of solutions of a recently proposed diffuse interface/phase field model for cell blebbing by means of matched asymptotic expansions. It is a biological phenomenon that increasingly attracts attention by both…
The excimer formation dynamics of pyrene-labeled molecules in lipid bilayers depends on molecular motion over distances of the order of 1-2 nm. From the concentration dependence of the excimer photoemission curve, it is possible to derive a…
We present a minimal model for simulating dynamics of assorted lipid assemblies in a computationally efficient manner. Our model is particle-based and consists of coarse-grained beads put together on a modular platform to give generic…