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Instabilities due to charge-density-curvature coupling in charged membranes
1Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560 012, India.
Abstract:
Instabilities are caused by the reduction in the electrostatic energy when the membrane is curved with the higher charge density on the bilayer which is stretched by the curvature. In a bilayer where the charges can flip from one lipid layer to the other, there is a thermodynamic instability to a spontaneously curved state with different charge densities on the two sides. If the charges are not permitted to flip, there is a dynamical instability due to the correlated modulation of the charge density and curvature fields. Numerical estimates show that these effects are present in parameter regimes relevant to biological systems.
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