Related papers: Stabilization/destabilization of cell membranes by…
Membrane deformation inside living cells is crucial for the proper shaping of various intracellular organelles and is necessary during the fission/fusion processes that allow membrane recycling and transport (e.g. endocytosis). Proteins…
We present a model for pore stabilization in membranes without surface tension. Whereas an isolated pore is always unstable (since it either shrinks tending to re-seal or grows without bound til to membrane disintegration), it is shown that…
We use coarse-grained Monte Carlo simulations to study the elastic properties of charged membranes in solutions of monovalent and pentavalent counterions. The simulation results of the two cases reveal trends opposite to each other. The…
We investigate the steady states and dynamical instabilities resulting from ``particles'' depositing on (fusion) and pinching off (fission) a fluid membrane. These particles could be either small lipid vesicles or isolated proteins. In the…
Biological water is an ionic solution containing both monovalent and divalent ions. However, the effects of divalent ions on the dynamics of biological water remain largely unknown. Here, we investigate how the transport dynamics of water…
Cell membranes are anchored to the cytoskeleton via immobile inclusions. We investigate the effect of such anchors on the in-plane dynamics of a fluid membrane and mobile inclusions (proteins) embedded in it. The immobile particles lead to…
The alteration of the dielectric membrane properties by membrane engineering techniques such as carbon nanotube (CNT) coating opens the way to novel molecular transport strategies for biosensing purposes. In this article, we predict a…
Biological, physical, medical, and numerical applications involving membrane problems on different scales are numerous. We propose an extension of the standard Turing theory to the case of two domains separated by a permeable membrane. To…
We construct a coarse-grained effective two-dimensional (2d) hydrodynamic theory as a theoretical model for a coupled system of a fluid membrane and a thin layer of a polar active fluid in its ordered state that is anchored to the membrane.…
We predict the conditions under which two oppositely charged membranes show a dynamic, attractive instability. Two layers with unequal charges of opposite sign can repel or be stable when in close proximity. However, dynamic charge density…
We briefly review the effects of selective solvation of ions in aqueous mixtures, where the ion densities and the composition fluctuations are strongly coupled. We then examine the surface tension \gamma of a liquid-liquid interface in the…
A coarse-grained computational model is used to investigate the effect of a fluctuating fluid membrane on the dynamics of patchy-particle assembly into virus capsid-like cores. Results from simulations for a broad range of parameters are…
Signaling molecules play an important role for many cellular functions. We investigate here a general system of two membrane reaction-diffusion equations coupled to a diffusion equation inside the cell by a Robin-type boundary condition and…
In multicomponent membranes, internal scalar fields may couple to membrane curvature, thus renormalizing the membrane elastic constants and destabilizing the flat membranes. Here, a general elasticity theory of membranes is considered that…
Unassisted ion transport through lipid membranes plays a crucial role in many cell functions without which life would not be possible, yet the precise mechanism behind the process remains unknown due to its molecular complexity. Here, we…
We investigate how an externally imposed curvature influences lipid segregation on two-phase-coexistent membranes. We show that the bending-modulus contrast of the two phases and the curvature act together to yield a reduced effective line…
We study the non-equilibrium dynamics of lipid membranes with proteins that actively pump ions across the membrane. We find that the activity leads to a fluctuating force distribution due to electrostatic interactions arising from variation…
A coarse-grained computational model is used to investigate the effect of a fluid membrane on patchy-particle assembly into biologically-relevant structures motivated by viral cores and clathrin. For cores, we demonstrate a non-monotonic…
We present a novel buckling instability relevant to membrane budding in eukaryotic cells. In this mechanism, curved filaments bind to a lipid bilayer without changing its intrinsic curvature. As more and more filaments adsorb, newly added…
It is known that a large, charged body immersed in a solution of multivalent counterions may undergo charge inversion as the counterions adsorb to its surface. We use the theory of charge inversion to examine the case of a deformable,…