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Updated: May 20, 2026

Phase Behavior of Charged Vesicles Under Symmetric and Asymmetric Solution Conditions Monitored with Fluorescence Microscopy
Published on: October 24, 2017
The influence of membrane bound proteins on phase separation and coarsening in cell membranes
Thomas Witkowski1, Rainer Backofen, Axel Voigt
1Department of Mathematics, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany. thomas.witkowski@tu-dresden.de
Abstract:
A theoretical explanation of the existence of lipid rafts in cell membranes remains a topic of lively debate. Large, micrometer sized rafts are readily observed in artificial membranes and can be explained using thermodynamic models for phase separation and coarsening. In live cells such domains are not observed and various models are proposed to describe why the systems do not coarsen. We review these attempts critically and show within a phase field approach that membrane bound proteins have the potential to explain the different behaviour observed in vitro and in vivo. Large scale simulations are performed to compute scaling laws and size distribution functions under the influence of membrane bound proteins and to observe a significant slow down of the domain coarsening at longer times and a breakdown of the self-similarity of the size-distribution function.
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