2015/10/10 by Richard W. Tourdot, Tourdot, Richard W., N. Ramakrishnan +5
Physics and Astronomy · #Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech #physics.bio-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1510.02986
10 figures
arxiv created 2015/10/10 · arxiv updated 2015/10/13
We investigate the phenomenon of protein induced tubulation of lipid bilayer membranes within a continuum framework using Monte Carlo simulations coupled with the Widom insertion technique to compute excess chemical potentials. Tubular morphologies are spontaneously formed when the density and the curvature-field strength of the membrane bound proteins exceed their respective thresholds and this transition is marked by a sharp drop in the excess chemical potential. We find that the planar to tubular transition can be described by a micellar model and that the corresponding free energy barrier increases with increase in the curvature-field strength, (i.e. of protein-membrane interactions), and also with increase in membrane tension.