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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 14: Membranes and Vesicles
BP 14.9: Talk
Wednesday, March 28, 2012, 12:00–12:15, H 1028
Effective Monte-Carlo simulations for the domain dynamics in membrane adhesion — •Markus Knoll1, Timo Bihr2, Udo Seifert2, and Ana-Sunčana Smith1 — 1Institut für Theoretische Physik and Excellence Cluster: Engineering of Advanced Materials, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany — 2II. Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Stuttgart, Germany
The formation of domains in membrane adhesion arises from the competition of the nonspecific interactions with ligand-receptor binding. The latter deform the membrane and induce long-range effects between bonds. The dynamics of this process has been studied previously by Langevin simulations in which the membrane deformations and fluctuations, the diffusion of binders, and the specific ligand-receptor interactions have been treated explicitly as coupled stochastic processes (Reister et al. New J. Phys. 13, 025003, 2011). However, due to the limited system size, these simulations could not provide information on the domain morphology. By using the fact that the membrane shape and fluctuation profile can be calculated explicitly for an arbitrary distribution of bonds, we develop an effective Monte Carlo simulation scheme. Thereby, the membrane is not explicitly simulated but its influence is taken into account through a set of effective rates for the ligand-receptor (un)binding, the latter depending on the temporal local environment of the bond and the free binders. By using these rates we reproduce the equilibrium and the average domain growth dynamics observed in the Langevin simulations and at the same time, find several qualitatively different domain growth regimes.