159 research outputs found
Super-resolution imaging of highly curved membrane structures in giant vesicles encapsulating molecular condensates
Molecular crowding is an inherent feature of the cell interior. Synthetic cells as provided by giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) encapsulating macromolecules (polyethylene-glycol and dextran) represent an excellent mimetic system to study membrane transformations associated with molecular crowding and protein condensation. Similarly to cells, such GUVs loaded with macromolecules exhibit highly curved structures such as internal nanotubes. In addition, upon liquid-liquid phase separation as inside living cells, the membrane of GUVs encapsulating an aqueous two-phase system deforms to form apparent kinks at the contact line of the interface between the two aqueous phases. These structures, nanotubes and kinks, have dimensions below optical resolution and if resolved, can provide information about material properties such as membrane spontaneous curvature and intrinsic contact angle describing the wettability contrast of the encapsulated phases to the membrane. Previous experimental studies were based on conventional optical microscopy which cannot resolve these membrane and wetting properties. Here, we studied these structures with super-resolution microscopy, namely stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy, together with microfluidic manipulation. We demonstrate the cylindrical nature of the nanotubes with unprecedented detail based on the superior resolution of STED and automated data analysis. The spontaneous curvature deduced from the nanotube diameters is in excellent agreement with theoretical predictions. Furthermore, we were able to resolve the membrane âkinkâ structure as a smoothly curved membrane demonstrating the existence of the intrinsic contact angle. We find very good agreement between the directly measured values and the theoretically predicted ones based on the apparent contact angles on the micrometer scale. During different stages of cellular events, biomembranes undergo a variety of shape transformations such as the formation of buds and nanotubes regulated by membrane necks. We demonstrate that these highly curved membrane structures are amenable to STED imaging and show that such studies provide important insights in the membrane properties and interactions underlying cellular activities
Critical phenomena of thick branes in warped spacetimes
We have investigated the effects of a generic bulk first-order phase
transition on thick Minkowski branes in warped geometries. As occurs in
Euclidean space, when the system is brought near the phase transition an
interface separating two ordered phases splits into two interfaces with a
disordered phase in between. A remarkable and distinctive feature is that the
critical temperature of the phase transition is lowered due to pure geometrical
effects. We have studied a variety of critical exponents and the evolution of
the transverse-traceless sector of the metric fluctuations.Comment: revtex4, 4 pages, 4 figures, some comments added, typos corrected,
published in PR
Conformally invariant bending energy for hypersurfaces
The most general conformally invariant bending energy of a closed
four-dimensional surface, polynomial in the extrinsic curvature and its
derivatives, is constructed. This invariance manifests itself as a set of
constraints on the corresponding stress tensor. If the topology is fixed, there
are three independent polynomial invariants: two of these are the
straighforward quartic analogues of the quadratic Willmore energy for a
two-dimensional surface; one is intrinsic (the Weyl invariant), the other
extrinsic; the third invariant involves a sum of a quadratic in gradients of
the extrinsic curvature -- which is not itself invariant -- and a quartic in
the curvature. The four-dimensional energy quadratic in extrinsic curvature
plays a central role in this construction.Comment: 16 page
Second variation of the Helfrich-Canham Hamiltonian and reparametrization invariance
A covariant approach towards a theory of deformations is developed to examine
both the first and second variation of the Helfrich-Canham Hamiltonian --
quadratic in the extrinsic curvature -- which describes fluid vesicles at
mesoscopic scales. Deformations are decomposed into tangential and normal
components; At first order, tangential deformations may always be identified
with a reparametrization; at second order, they differ. The relationship
between tangential deformations and reparametrizations, as well as the coupling
between tangential and normal deformations, is examined at this order for both
the metric and the extrinsic curvature tensors. Expressions for the expansion
to second order in deformations of geometrical invariants constructed with
these tensors are obtained; in particular, the expansion of the Hamiltonian to
this order about an equilibrium is considered. Our approach applies as well to
any geometrical model for membranes.Comment: 20 page
On Growth, Disorder, and Field Theory
This article reviews recent developments in statistical field theory far from
equilibrium. It focuses on the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation of stochastic
surface growth and its mathematical relatives, namely the stochastic Burgers
equation in fluid mechanics and directed polymers in a medium with quenched
disorder. At strong stochastic driving -- or at strong disorder, respectively
-- these systems develop nonperturbative scale-invariance. Presumably exact
values of the scaling exponents follow from a self-consistent asymptotic
theory. This theory is based on the concept of an operator product expansion
formed by the local scaling fields. The key difference to standard Lagrangian
field theory is the appearance of a dangerous irrelevant coupling constant
generating dynamical anomalies in the continuum limit.Comment: review article, 50 pages (latex), 10 figures (eps), minor
modification of original versio
Interface Fluctuations on a Hierarchical Lattice
We consider interface fluctuations on a two-dimensional layered lattice where
the couplings follow a hierarchical sequence. This problem is equivalent to the
diffusion process of a quantum particle in the presence of a one-dimensional
hierarchical potential. According to a modified Harris criterion this type of
perturbation is relevant and one expects anomalous fluctuating behavior. By
transfer-matrix techniques and by an exact renormalization group transformation
we have obtained analytical results for the interface fluctuation exponents,
which are discontinuous at the homogeneous lattice limit.Comment: 14 pages plain Tex, one Figure upon request, Phys Rev E (in print
Cylindrical equilibrium shapes of fluid membranes
Within the framework of the well-known curvature models, a fluid lipid
bilayer membrane is regarded as a surface embedded in the three-dimensional
Euclidean space whose equilibrium shapes are described in terms of its mean and
Gaussian curvatures by the so-called membrane shape equation. In the present
paper, all solutions to this equation determining cylindrical membrane shapes
are found and presented, together with the expressions for the corresponding
position vectors, in explicit analytic form. The necessary and sufficient
conditions for such a surface to be closed are derived and several sufficient
conditions for its directrix to be simple or self-intersecting are given.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures. Published in J. Phys. A: Math. Theore
Direct Visualization of Dislocation Dynamics in Grain Boundary Scars
Mesoscale objects with unusual structural features may serve as the analogues
of atoms in the design of larger-scale materials with novel optical, electronic
or mechanical behaviour. In this paper we investigate the structural features
and the equilibrium dynamics of micron-scale spherical crystals formed by
polystyrene particles adsorbed on the surface of a spherical water droplet. The
ground state of sufficiently large crystals possesses finite-length grain
boundaries (scars). We determine the elastic response of the crystal by
measuring single-particle diffusion and quantify the fluctuations of individual
dislocations about their equilibrium positions within a scar determining the
dislocation spring constants. We observe rapid dislocation glide with
fluctuations over the barriers separating one local Peierls minimum from the
next and rather weak binding of dislocations to their associated scars. The
long-distance (renormalised) dislocation diffusion glide constant is extracted
directly from the experimental data and is found to be moderately faster than
single particle diffusion. We are also able to determine the parameters of the
Peierls potential induced by the underlying crystalline lattice.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, pdf forma
Tyrosine Sulfation of Native Mouse Psgl-1 Is Required for Optimal Leukocyte Rolling on P-Selectin In Vivo
We recently demonstrated that tyrosine sulfation is an important contributor to monocyte recruitment and retention in a mouse model of atherosclerosis. P-selectin glycoprotein ligand-1 (Psgl-1) is tyrosine-sulfated in mouse monocyte/macrophages and its interaction with P-selectin is important in monocyte recruitment in atherosclerosis. However, whether tyrosine sulfation is required for the P-selectin binding function of mouse Psgl-1 is unknown. Here we test the function of native Psgl-1 expressed in leukocytes lacking endogenous tyrosylprotein sulfotransferase (TPST) activity.Psgl-1 function was assessed by examining P-selectin dependent leukocyte rolling in post-capillary venules of C57BL6 mice transplanted with hematopoietic progenitors from wild type (WT â B6) or Tpst1;Tpst2 double knockout mice (Tpst DKO â B6) which lack TPST activity. We observed that rolling flux fractions were lower and leukocyte rolling velocities were higher in Tpst DKO â B6 venules compared to WT â B6 venules. Similar results were observed on immobilized P-selectin in vitro. Finally, Tpst DKO leukocytes bound less P-selectin than wild type leukocytes despite equivalent surface expression of Psgl-1.These findings provide direct and convincing evidence that tyrosine sulfation is required for optimal function of mouse Psgl-1 in vivo and suggests that tyrosine sulfation of Psgl-1 contributes to the development of atherosclerosis
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