2,531 research outputs found
Binding of Oppositely Charged Membranes and Membrane Reorganization
We consider the electrostatic interaction between two rigid membranes, with
different surface charge densities of opposite sign, across an aqueous solution
without added salt. Exact solutions to the nonlinear Poisson-Boltzmann equation
are obtained and their physical meaning discussed. We also calculate the
electrostatic contribution to the free energy and discuss the renormalization
of the area per head group of the charged lipids arising from the Coulomb
interaction.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, to be published in EJP
Polyelectrolyte-colloid complexes: polarizability and effective interaction
We theoretically study the polarizability and the interactions of neutral
complexes consisting of a semi-flexible polyelectrolyte adsorbed onto an
oppositely charged spherical colloid. In the systems we studied, the bending
energy of the chain is small compared to the Coulomb energy and the chains are
always adsorbed on the colloid. We observe that the polarizability is large for
short chains and small electrical fields and shows a non-monotonic behavior
with the chain length at fixed charge density. The polarizability has a maximum
for a chain length equal to half of the circumference of the colloid. For long
chains we recover the polarizability of a classical conducting sphere. For
short chains, the existence of a permanent dipole moment of the complexes leads
to a van der Waal's-type long-range attraction between them. This attractive
interaction vanishes for long chains (i.e., larger than the colloidal size),
where the permanent dipole moment is negligible. For short distances the
complexes interact with a deep short-ranged attraction which is due to
energetic bridging for short chains and entropic bridging for long chains.
Exceeding a critical chain length eventually leads to a pure repulsion. This
shows that the stabilization of colloidal suspensions by polyelectrolyte
adsorption is strongly dependent on the chain size relative to the colloidal
size: for long chains the suspensions are always stable (only repulsive forces
between the particles), while for mid-sized and short chains there is
attraction between the complexes and a salting-out can occur.Comment: 13 pages, 14 figure
Long-Range Interaction between Heterogeneously Charged Membranes
Despite their neutrality, surfaces or membranes with equal amounts of positive and negative charge can exhibit long-range electrostatic interactions if the surface charge is heterogeneous; this can happen when the surface charges form finite-size domain structures. These domains can be formed in lipid membranes where the balance of the different ranges of strong but short-ranged hydrophobic interactions and longer-ranged electrostatic repulsion result in a finite, stable domain size. If the domain size is large enough, oppositely charged domains in two opposing surfaces or membranes can be strongly correlated by the elecrostatic interactions; these correlations give rise to an attractive interaction of the two membranes or surfaces over separations on the order of the domain size. We use numerical simulations to demonstrate the existence of strong attractions at separations of tens of nanometers. Large line tensions result in larger domains but also increase the charge density within the domain. This promotes correlations and, as a result, increases the intermembrane attraction. On the other hand, increasing the salt concentration increases both the domain size and degree of domain anticorrelation, but the interactions are ultimately reduced due to increased screening. The result is a decrease in the net attraction as salt concentration is increased
A lattice model of hydrophobic interactions
Hydrogen bonding is modeled in terms of virtual exchange of protons between
water molecules. A simple lattice model is analyzed, using ideas and techniques
from the theory of correlated electrons in metals. Reasonable parameters
reproduce observed magnitudes and temperature dependence of the hydrophobic
interaction between substitutional impurities and water within this lattice.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures. To appear in Europhysics Letter
Counterion density profiles at charged flexible membranes
Counterion distributions at charged soft membranes are studied using
perturbative analytical and simulation methods in both weak coupling
(mean-field or Poisson-Boltzmann) and strong coupling limits. The softer the
membrane, the more smeared out the counterion density profile becomes and
counterions pentrate through the mean-membrane surface location, in agreement
with anomalous scattering results. Membrane-charge repulsion leads to a
short-scale roughening of the membrane.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Organized condensation of worm-like chains
We present results relevant to the equilibrium organization of DNA strands of
arbitrary length interacting with a spherical organizing center, suggestive of
DNA-histone complexation in nucleosomes. We obtain a rich phase diagram in
which a wrapping state is transformed into a complex multi-leafed, rosette
structure as the adhesion energy is reduced. The statistical mechanics of the
"melting" of a rosette can be mapped into an exactly soluble one-dimensional
many-body problem.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures in a pdf fil
Charge-Fluctuation-Induced Non-analytic Bending Rigidity
In this Letter, we consider a neutral system of mobile positive and negative
charges confined on the surface of curved films. This may be an appropriate
model for: i) a highly charged membrane whose counterions are confined to a
sheath near its surface; ii) a membrane composed of an equimolar mixture of
anionic and cationic surfactants in aqueous solution. We find that the charge
fluctuations contribute a non-analytic term to the bending rigidity that varies
logarithmically with the radius of curvature. This may lead to spontaneous
vesicle formation, which is indeed observed in similar systems.Comment: Revtex, 9 pages, no figures, submitted to PR
On the signature of tensile blobs in the scattering function of a stretched polymer
We present Monte Carlo data for a linear chain with excluded volume subjected
to a uniform stretching. Simulation of long chains (up to 6000 beads) at high
stretching allows us to observe the signature of tensile blobs as a crossover
in the scaling behavior of the chain scattering function for wave vectors
perpendicular to stretching. These results and corresponding ones in the
stretching direction allow us to verify for the first time Pincus prediction on
scaling inside blobs. Outside blobs, the scattering function is well described
by the Debye function for a stretched ideal chain.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Physical Review Letter
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