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Updated: Jun 5, 2026

In Vitro Reconstitution of Self-Organizing Protein Patterns on Supported Lipid Bilayers
Published on: July 28, 2018
Correlated dynamics of inclusions in a supported membrane
Naomi Oppenheimer1, Haim Diamant
1Beverly and Raymond Sackler School of Chemistry, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel.
Abstract:
The hydrodynamic theory of heterogeneous fluid membranes is extended to the case of a membrane adjacent to a solid substrate. We derive the coupling diffusion coefficients of pairs of membrane inclusions in the limit of large separation compared to the inclusion size. Two-dimensional compressive stresses in the membrane make the coupling coefficients decay asymptotically as 1/r(2) with interparticle distance r. For the common case, where the distance to the substrate is of submicrometer scale, we present expressions for the coupling between distant disklike inclusions, which are valid for arbitrary inclusion size. We calculate the effect of inclusions on the response of the membrane and the associated corrections to the coupling diffusion coefficients to leading order in the concentration of inclusions. While at short distances the response is modified as if the membrane were a two-dimensional suspension, the large-distance response is not renormalized by the inclusions.
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