Diffusion mediated coagulation and fragmentation based study of domain formation in lipid bilayer membrane

We estimate the equilibrium size distribution of cholesterol rich micro-domains on a lipid bilayer by solving Smoluchowski equation for coagulation and fragmentation. Towards this aim, we first derive the coagulation kernels based on the diffusion behaviour of domains moving in a two dimensional mem...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhysica. B, Condensed matter Vol. 505; pp. 74 - 83
Main Authors Rao V., Laxminarsimha, Roy, Subhradeep, Das, Sovan Lal
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 15.01.2017
Elsevier BV
Subjects
Aggregation
Cholesterol
Coagulation
Diffusion
Fragmentation
Kernels
Lipids
Size distribution
Smoluchowski equation
Studies
Aggregation
Lipids
Diffusion
Smoluchowski equation
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Summary:We estimate the equilibrium size distribution of cholesterol rich micro-domains on a lipid bilayer by solving Smoluchowski equation for coagulation and fragmentation. Towards this aim, we first derive the coagulation kernels based on the diffusion behaviour of domains moving in a two dimensional membrane sheet, as this represents the reality better. We incorporate three different diffusion scenarios of domain diffusion into our coagulation kernel. Subsequently, we investigate the influence of the parameters in our model on the coagulation and fragmentation behaviour. The observed behaviours of the coagulation and fragmentation kernels are also manifested in the equilibrium domain size distribution and its first moment. Finally, considering the liquid domains diffusing in a supported lipid bilayer, we fit the equilibrium domain size distribution to a benchmark solution.
ISSN:0921-4526
1873-2135
DOI:10.1016/j.physb.2016.10.015