Regensburg 2004 – scientific programme

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AKB: Biologische Physik

AKB 50: Poster Session "Biological Physics"

AKB 50.46: Poster

Friday, March 12, 2004, 10:30–13:00, B

Membrane mechanics and polymer decoration — •Thorsten Auth and Gerhard Gompper — Institut für Festkörperforschung, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425 Jülich

Polymers embedded into or attached to lipid bilayer membranes modify the membrane’s mechanical properties. A prominent example of a polymer-membrane system is the red blood cell [1]. The lipid bilayer membrane can be modeled by a mathematical surface and a set of material constants: bending rigidity, saddle-splay modulus, spontaneous curvature. In many cases the effect of attached, adsorbed or free polymers can be described by effective curvature elastic constants (see e. g. [2]).

The excluded-volume interaction is well known to strongly affect the scaling behaviour of polymer chains. We have therefore developed a Monte Carlo simulation method to investigate the effects of self-avoidance and different polymer architectures on the curvature elastic constants for low polymer coverage [3]. The method will be introduced, results for the effective curvature constants will be presented and discussed together with implications on the behaviour of membrane systems.

[1] N. Gov, A. G. Zilman and S. Safran; Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 228101 (2003)

[2] C. Hiergeist and R. Lipowsky; J. Phys. II (France) 6, 1465 (1996)

[3] T. Auth and G. Gompper; Phys. Rev. E 68, 051801 (2003)