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Updated: Nov 28, 2025

A Nanobar-Supported Lipid Bilayer System for the Study of Membrane Curvature Sensing Proteins in vitro
Published on: November 30, 2022
Chiral molecules on curved colloidal membranes
Sk Ashif Akram1, Arabinda Behera, Prerna Sharma
1Department Of Physics, Indian Institute Of Technology Bombay, Powai-400076, Mumbai, India. asain@phy.iitb.ac.in.
Abstract:
Colloidal membranes, self assembled monolayers of aligned rod like molecules, offer a template for designing membranes with definite shapes and curvature, and possibly new functionalities in the future. Often the constituent rods, due to their molecular chirality, are tilted with respect to the membrane normal. Spatial patterns of this tilt on curved membranes result from a competition among depletion forces, nematic interactions, molecular chirality and boundary effects. We present a covariant theory for the tilt pattern on minimal surfaces, like helicoids and catenoids, which have been generated in the laboratory only recently. We predict several non-uniform tilt patterns, some of which are consistent with experimental observations and some, which are yet to be discovered.
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