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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 13: Posters: Biological Membranes

BP 13.3: Poster

Monday, March 14, 2011, 17:15–20:00, P3

Shape and fluctuations of a membrane pinned to a patterned substrate — •Daniel Schmidt¹, Udo Seifert¹, and Ana-Sunčana Smith² — ¹II. Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Stuttgart — ²Institut für Theoretische Physik and Excellence Cluster: Engineering of Advanced Materials, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

We study the interplay between tension and nonspecific adhesion of a fluctuating phospholipid bilayer by pinning the membrane on a square-patterned substrate. The membrane itself is described by the Helfrich Hamiltonian. The membrane-substrate nonspecific interaction, which is in our model approximated by a harmonic potential, has a minimum at a finite distances from the substrate and thus induces membrane deformations. By minimizing the total free energy and using the equipartition theorem, we determine the shape and the roughness of the membrane, and follow the behavior of the membrane over the whole range of tensions.

By applying the theoretical results to the data acquired in experiments on an analogous in-vitro system, we can unambiguously determine the strength of the potential and the tension in the measurements.