Membrane mechanics and rupture using coarse-grained hydrophobic attraction potentials

Abstract: The talk goes over key modeling approaches for describing lipid bilayer membranes, including particle-based simulation, theoretical continuum mechanical description, fluid mechanical models and direct connections between theory and experiment. The second part of the talk gives a mesoscopic formulation alternative to the standard Helfrich hamiltonian. Motivated by considerations of hydrophobic surfaces that arise in theoretical studies of membrane fusion, the formulation is flexible enough to resolve the details of molecular transitions while retaining the continuum features of bilayer away from the transitions. The framework assumes coarse-grained lipid 'particles', that interact through the solution of an appropriate second order elliptic PDE in the aqueous phase. Boundary conditions on each particle directly model the amphiphilic property of lipid, and lead to, as simulation outputs, elastic properties previously assumed in membrane mechanics. A manuscript in SIAM J Multiscale Modeling and Simulation (2020) summarizes some of the results.

general mathematics

Audience: researchers in the topic

( paper | slides )

Comments: meeting has ended

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Global Seminar on Mathematical Modeling and Applications

Series comments: Description: Occasional seminar on mathematical modeling and related topics

In light of the worldwide cancellations of meetings workshops and conferences many of us are forced to switch to online mode of communication. Thus following the example of many other initiatives we decided to organize a Global Seminar on Mathematical Modeling and Applications.

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