Berlin 2008 – wissenschaftliches Programm

Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Downloads | Hilfe

BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 7: Posters I

BP 7.41: Poster

Montag, 25. Februar 2008, 17:00–19:30, Poster A

Monte-Carlo simulations of a coarse-grained model for lipid membranes — •Beate West and Friederike Schmid — Fakultät für Physik, Universität Bielefeld, Universitätsstr. 25, 33615 Bielefeld

A simple coarse-grained model for self-assembling lipid membranes is presented. The “lipids” are represented by short linear spring-bead chains, which self-assemble to membranes due to the presence of a computationally cheap “phantom” solvent environment. These membranes may contain “transmembrane proteins”, represented by cylinders with diameters corresponding to the diameter of an alpha-helix. The system is studied by Monte Carlo simulations at constant pressure using a parallel code with a newly devised domain decomposition scheme. Pure fluid membranes are characterized in some detail. The pressure profiles and the fluctuation spectra are calculated, and the elastic constants are extracted. Then, the membrane distortions caused by single embedded proteins are determined as a function of the lipid-protein interaction strength. These distortions influence the effective interactions between proteins, which are obtained by determining the protein-protein pair-correlation function with umbrella sampling techniques.