Related papers: Fission of a multiphase membrane tube
Recently, Rozovsky et al. reported on the morphology and dynamics of superstructures in three-component lipid bilayers containing saturated and unsaturated lipids as well as cholesterol [J. Am. Chem. Soc. 127, 36 (2005)]. We comment that…
We report diffusion coeffcients of micron-scale liquid domains in giant unilamellar vesicles of phospholipids and cholesterol. The trajectory of each domain is tracked, and the mean square displacement grows linearly in time as expected for…
Motivated by recent experiments on biomimetic membranes exposed to several aqueous phases, we theoretically study the morphology of a membrane in contact with a liquid droplet formed via aqueous phase separation. We concentrate on membranes…
Large-scale cellular transformations are triggered by subtle physical and structural changes in individual biomacromolecular and membrane components. A prototypical example of such an event is the orchestrated fusion of membranes within an…
Specific lipid environments are necessary for the establishment of protein signalling platforms in membranes, yet their origin has been highly debated. We present a continuum, exactly solvable model of protein induced local demixing of…
A new model for the interaction of an electric pulse with a lipid membrane is proposed. Using this model we show that when a DC electric pulse is applied to an insulating lipid membrane separating fluids with different conductivities, the…
Biological membranes are host to proteins and molecules which may form domain-like structures resulting in spatially-varying material properties. Vesicles with such heterogeneous membranes can exhibit intricate shapes at equilibrium and…
Recent research has shown that motile cells can adapt their mode of propulsion to the mechanical properties of the environment in which they find themselves--crawling in some environments while swimming in others. The latter can involve…
Cellular rearrangements, as primary sources of tissue fluidization, facilitate topological transitions during tissue morphogenesis. We study the role of intrinsic cell properties such as cell polarity and cell-cell adhesion in shaping…
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…
In cell membranes, proteins and lipids diffuse in a highly crowded and heterogeneous landscape, where aggregates and dense domains of proteins or lipids obstruct the path of diffusing molecules. In general, hindered motion gives rise to…
We numerically investigate the hydrodynamics and membrane dynamics of multicomponent vesicles in two strongly confined geometries. This serves as a simplified model for red blood cells undergoing large deformations while traversing narrow…
We study the equilibrium conformations of a lipid domain on a planar fluid membrane where the domain is decorated by a vector field representing the tilt of the stiff fatty acid chains of the lipid molecules, while the surrounding membrane…
Cell membranes phase separate into ordered ${\rm L_o}$ and disordered ${\rm L_d}$ domains depending on their compositions. This membrane compartmentalization is heterogeneous and regulates the localization of specific proteins related to…
Ever since the raft model for biomembranes has been proposed, the traditional view of biomembranes based on the fluid-mosaic model has been altered. In the raft model, dynamical heterogeneities in multi-component lipid bilayers play an…
We discuss different mechanisms for curvature-induced domain formation in multicomponent lipid membranes and present a theoretical model that allows us to study the interplay between the domains. The model represents the membrane by two…
We study the shapes of elastic membranes under the simultaneous exertion of tensile and compressive forces when the translational symmetry along the tension direction is broken. We predict a multitude of novel morphological phases in…
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.…
Living cells employ excitable reaction-diffusion waves for internal cellular functions, in which curvature-inducing proteins are often involved. However, the role of their mechanochemical coupling is not well understood. Here, we report the…
A theory is presented for the membrane junction separation induced by the adhesion between two biomimetic membranes that contain two different types of anchored junctions (receptor/ligand complexes). The analysis shows that several…