Related papers: Mechanical performance of hybrid polymer-lipid ves…
A question of considerable interest to cell membrane biology is whether phase segregated domains across an asymmetric bilayer are strongly correlated with each other and whether phase segregation in one leaflet can induce segregation in the…
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…
The design of complex materials and the formation of specific patterns often arise from the properties of the individual building blocks. In this respect, colloidal systems offer a unique opportunity because nowadays they can be synthesized…
In this work, we study the adhesion of multi-component vesicle membrane to both flat and curved substrates, based on the conventional Helfrich bending energy for multi-component vesicles and adhesion potentials of different forms. A phase…
Lipid vesicles appear ubiquitously in biological systems. Understanding how the mechanical and intermolecular interations deform vesicle membrane is a fundamental question in biophysics. In this article we developed a fast algorithm to…
Soft particles display highly versatile properties with respect to hard colloids, even more so at fluid-fluid interfaces. In particular, microgels, consisting of a cross-linked polymer network, are able to deform and flatten upon adsorption…
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…
The remarkable preference of biomembranes, to constitute vesicles of certain discrete sizes is explained by using the following properties of phospholipids that are either well understood or at least documented. A. By hexagonal…
Vibrational sum frequency scattering (SFS) has been used to study sub-micron, catanionic vesicles in solution. The vesicles were synthesized from a binary mixture of dodecyltrimethylammonium bromide (DTAB) and sodium dodecylsulfate (SDS)…
We present Monte Carlo simulations of an ultra coarse-grained lipid bilayer with different number of lipids on both leaflets. In the simulations, we employ a new method for measuring the elastic parameters of the membrane, including the…
We grafted polyacrylic acid brushes containing cysteine side chains at a defined surface density on planar lipid membranes. Specular X-ray reflectivity data indicated that the addition of Cd2+ ions induces the compaction of the polymer…
We investigate the influence of a non-ionic surfactant like polymer on phospholipid vesicles. Our results from cryogenic transmission electron microscopy (cryo-TEM), dynamic light scattering (DLS), small angle neutron and X-ray scattering…
Correctly formulated continuum models for lipid-bilayer membranes present a significant challenge to computational mechanics. In particular, the mid-surface behavior is that of a 2-dimensional fluid, while the membrane resists bending much…
The design of vesicles which become unstable at an easily tuned value of pH is of great interest for targeted drug delivery. We present a microscopic theory for two forms of such vesicles. A model of lipids introduced by us previously is…
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…
Amphiphilic lipid bilayers modify the friction properties of the surfaces on top of which they are deposited. In particular, the measured sliding friction coefficient is significantly reduced compared with the native surface. We investigate…
Cells offer numerous inspiring examples where proteins and membranes combine to form complex structures that are key to intracellular compartmentalization, cargo transport, and specialization of cell morphology. Despite this wealth of…
Nature is remarkably adept at using interfaces to build structures, encapsulate reagents, and regulate biological processes. Inspired by Nature, we describe flexible polymer-based ribbons, termed "mesoscale polymers" (MSPs), to modulate…
In this paper, phase field models are developed for multi-component vesicle membranes with different lipid compositions and membranes with free boundary. These models are used to simulate the deformation of membranes under the elastic…
Amphiphiles are molecules which have both hydrophilic and hydrophobic parts. In water- and/or oil-like solvent, they self-assemble into extended sheet-like structures due to the hydrophobic effect. The free energy of an amphiphilic system…