Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
6371701 | Journal of Theoretical Biology | 2008 | 8 Pages |
Abstract
When partially polymerized membranes wrinkle they exhibit a passage from a conventional buckling (due to an instability caused by chiral symmetry breaking) at low polymerization to a local roughening (due to a frustration in the local packing of the chiral molecules composing the membrane) as a function of the polymerization of the lipids aliphatic tails. This transition was found to be non-universal and here we used neutron scattering to elucidate that this behavior is due to the onset of stretching in the membrane accompanied by a bilayer thickness variation. Close to the percolation limit this deformation is plastic similar to mutated lysozymes. We draw an analogy between this transition and echinocytes in red blood cells.
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Authors
Sahraoui Chaieb, Å árka Málková, Jyotsana Lal,