Related papers: Structure Factor of a Lamellar Smectic Phase with …
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…
Cellular membranes are elastic lipid bilayers that contain a variety of proteins, including ion channels, receptors, and scaffolding proteins. These proteins are known to diffuse in the plane of the membrane and to influence the bending of…
We study the fluctuation spectrum of fluid membranes carrying grafted polymers. Contrary to usual descriptions, we find that the modifications induced by the polymers cannot be reduced to the renormalization of the membrane bending…
We develop the elastic theory for inversion-asymmetric tethered membranes and use it to identify and study their possible phases. Asymmetry in a tethered membrane causes spontaneous curvature, which in general depends upon the local…
Interactions mediated by the cell membrane between inclusions, such as membrane proteins or antimicrobial peptides, play important roles in their biological activity. They also constitute a fascinating challenge for physicists, since they…
A rigorous homogenization theory is derived to describe the effective admittivity of cell suspensions. A new formula is reported for dilute cases that gives the frequency-dependent effective admittivity with respect to the membrane…
We consider the lateral diffusion of a protein interacting with the curvature of the membrane. The interaction energy is minimized if the particle is at a membrane position with a certain curvature that agrees with the spontaneous curvature…
We use a coarse-grained molecular model to study the self-assembly process of complexes of cationic and neutral lipids with DNA molecules ("lipoplexes") - a promising nonviral carrier of DNA for gene therapy. We identify the resulting…
The quantitative understanding of membranes is still rooted in work performed in the 1970s by Helfrich and others, concerning amphiphilic bilayers. However, most biological membranes contain a wide variety of nonamphiphilic molecules too.…
Within the framework of a discrete Gaussian model, we present analytical results for the interaction induced by a lamellar phase between small embedded colloids. We consider the two limits of particles strongly adherent to the adjacent…
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…
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…
We simulate a phase-separating a bilayer in which the leaflets experience a direct coupling favouring local compositional symmetry ("registered" bilayer phases), and an indirect coupling due to hydrophobic mismatch that favours strong local…
A model of lipid bilayers made of a mixture of two lipids with different average compositions on both leaflets, is developed. A Landau hamiltonian describing the lipid-lipid interactions on each leaflet, with two lipidic fields $\psi_1$ and…
Nonequilibrium dynamics of biomembranes with active inclusions is considered. The inclusions represent protein molecules which perform cyclic internal conformational motions driven by the energy brought with ATP ligands. As protein…
Simulation of a multicomponent lipid bilayer having a fixed percentage of cholesterol is done to study phase transition leading to domain formation. The concept of random lattice has been used in simulation to account for the coupling…
Composed of microscopic layers that stack along one direction while maintaining fluid-like positional disorder within layers, smectics are excellent systems for exploring topology, defects and geometric memory in complex confining…
Chiral liquid crystals often exhibit periodic modulations in the molecular director; in particular, thin films of the smectic-C* phase show a chiral striped texture. Here, we investigate whether similar chiral modulations can occur in the…
Membrane proteins often form dimers and higher-order oligomers whose stability and spatial organization depend sensitively on their lipid environment. To investigate the physical principles underlying this coupling, we employ a lattice…
We present a novel Monte Carlo simulation of the phase separation dynamics of a model fluid membrane. Such a phase segregation induces shape changes of the membrane and results in local `budding' under favourable conditions. We present a…