Related papers: Confined Multilamellae Prefer Cylindrical Morpholo…
We investigate the mechanical origin of polymorphic structures in two-dimensional tubulin assemblies, of which microtubules are the best known example. These structures feature twisted ribbons, flat tubulin sheets, macrotubules, and hoops,…
A phenomenological Landau elasticity for the shape, dilation, and lipid-tilt of bilayer membranes is developed. The shape mode couples with the sum of the monolayers' tilt, while the dilation mode couples with the difference of the…
Lipid membranes have complex compositions and modeling the thermodynamic properties of multi-component lipid systems remains a remote goal. In this work we attempt to describe the thermodynamics of binary lipid mixtures by mapping…
The phase behavior of colloidal particles embedded in a binary fluid is influenced by wetting layers surrounding each particle. The free energy of the fluid film depends on its morphology, i.e., on size, shape and connectivity. Under rather…
Binary mixtures of amphiphiles in solution can self-assemble into a wide range of structures when the two species individually form aggregates of different curvatures. A specific example of this is seen in solutions of lipid mixtures where…
We theoretically investigate the dynamics of a floating lipid bilayer membrane coupled with a two-dimensional cytoskeleton network, taking into explicitly account the intermonolayer friction, the discrete lattice structure of the…
We present real-time observations by confocal microscopy of the dynamic behavior of multilamellar vesicles (MLVs), composed of charged synthetic lipids, when put in contact with oppositely charged polyelectrolyte (PE) molecules. We find…
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…
In the deformation of layered materials such as geological strata, or stacks of paper, mechanical properties compete with the geometry of layering. Smooth, rounded corners lead to voids between the layers, while close packing of the layers…
The formation of chain-folded structures from the melt is observed in molecular dynamics simulations resembling the lamellae of polymer crystals. Crystallization and subsequent melting temperatures are related linearly to the inverse…
Since the lipid raft model was developed at the end of the last century, it became clear that the specific molecular arrangements of phospholipid assemblies within a membrane have profound implications in a vast range of physiological…
The inner mitochondrial membrane has been shown to have a novel structure that contains tubular components whose radii are on the order of 10 nm as well as comparatively flat regions. The structural organization of mitochondria is important…
Shape transformations of flat bilayer membranes and vesicles induced by hydrolysis and condensation reactions of amphiphilic molecules are studied using coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations. The hydrolysis and condensation…
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.…
Lipid membranes regulate the flow of materials and information between cells and their organelles. Further, lipid composition and morphology can play a key role in regulating a variety of biological processes. For example, viral uptake,…
Elastic crystalline membranes exhibit a buckling transition from sphere to polyhedron. However, their morphologies are restricted to convex polyhedra and are difficult to externally control. Here, we study morphological changes of closed…
We develop theory and computational methods to investigate particle inclusions embedded within curved lipid bilayer membranes. We consider the case of spherical lipid vesicles where inclusion particles are coupled through (i) intramembrane…
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…
Experiments on supported lipid bilayers featuring liquid ordered/disordered domains have shown that the spatial arrangement of the lipid domains and their chemical composition are strongly affected by the curvature of the substrate.…
The dynamical response of a lipid membrane to a local perturbation of its molecular symmetry is investigated theoretically. A density asymmetry between the two membrane leaflets is predominantly released by in-plane lipid diffusion or…