Berlin 2005 – scientific programme

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AKB: Biologische Physik

AKB 60: Membranes and Vesicles

AKB 60.3: Talk

Tuesday, March 8, 2005, 16:30–16:45, TU H2013

Single- and multicomponent vesicles at finite temperature — •Thomas Gruhn, Gunnar Linke, and Reinhard Lipowsky — MPIKG Golm, D-14424 Potsdam

Vesicles at finite temperature are studied with the help of Monte Carlo simulations. At finite temperature, a vesicle with no volume constraint is preferentially aspherical. The free energy has two minima for prolate and oblate configurations. With increasing pressure difference between in- and outside of the vesicle, it becomes more and more spherical.

For vesicles adhered to a substrate the adhesion area decreases linearly with increasing temperature. This is found in simulation studies of adhered vesicles with and without volume constraints. The results allow to obtain experimentally the bending stiffness and the adhesion strength of an adhered vesicle by measuring the temperature dependence of the adhesion area.

In multicomponent vesicles the formation of domains occur for large enough line tensions. The domains may differ in their mechanical and chemical properties, an effect which allows to mimick specific interactions between cells or between a cell and a substrate. Various examples are presented.