Bending elasticity of vesicle membranes studied by Monte Carlo simulations of vesicle thermal shape fluctuations.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 25909915.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1039/c5sm00431d.
- No licence information is recorded for this record.
- Because redistribution is not established, this page shows the abstract only. Follow the links below for the full text.
Abstract
The membrane bending stiffness of nearly spherical lipid vesicles can be deduced from the analysis of their thermal shape fluctuations. The theoretical basis of this analysis [Milner and Safran, Phys. Rev. A: At., Mol., Opt. Phys., 1987, 36, 4371-4379] uses the mean field approximation. In this work we apply Monte Carlo simulations and estimate the error in the determination of the bending stiffness due to the approximations applied in the theory. It is less than 10%. The method presented in this work can also be used to determine the changes of the bending stiffness of biological membranes due to their chemical and/or structural modifications.
Medical subject headings
- Elasticity
- Lipid Bilayers
- Liposomes
- Monte Carlo Method