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Updated: Jun 5, 2026

Realistic Membrane Modeling Using Complex Lipid Mixtures in Simulation Studies
Published on: September 1, 2023
Dynamic simulations of multicomponent lipid membranes over long length and time scales
Brian A Camley1, Frank L H Brown
1Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.
Abstract:
We present a stochastic phase-field model for multicomponent lipid bilayers that explicitly accounts for the quasi-two-dimensional hydrodynamic environment unique to a thin fluid membrane immersed in aqueous solution. Dynamics over a wide range of length scales (from nanometers to microns) for durations up to seconds and longer are readily accessed and provide a direct comparison to fluorescence microscopy measurements in ternary lipid-cholesterol mixtures. Simulations of phase separation kinetics agree with experiment and elucidate the importance of hydrodynamics in the coarsening process.
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