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Updated: Jun 2, 2026

Single-Molecule Diffusion and Assembly on Polymer-Crowded Lipid Membranes
Published on: July 19, 2022
Dynamics of a polymer chain confined in a membrane
S Ramachandran1, S Komura, K Seki
1Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Japan.
Abstract:
We present a Brownian dynamics theory with full hydrodynamics (Stokesian dynamics) for a Gaussian polymer chain embedded in a liquid membrane which is surrounded by bulk solvent and walls. The mobility tensors are derived in Fourier space for the two geometries, namely, a free membrane embedded in a bulk fluid, and a membrane sandwiched by the two walls. Within the preaveraging approximation, a new expression for the diffusion coefficient of the polymer is obtained for the free-membrane geometry. We also carry out a Rouse normal mode analysis to obtain the relaxation time and the dynamical structure factor. For large polymer size, both quantities show Zimm-like behavior in the free-membrane case, whereas they are Rouse-like for the sandwiched membrane geometry. We use the scaling argument to discuss the effect of excluded-volume interactions on the polymer relaxation time.
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