168,507 research outputs found
Electrostatic forces on charged surfaces of bilayer lipid membranes
Simulating protein-membrane interactions is an important and dynamic area of
research. A proper definition of electrostatic forces on membrane surfaces is
necessary for developing electromechanical models of protein-membrane
interactions. Here we modeled the bilayer membrane as a continuum with general
continuous distributions of lipids charges on membrane surfaces. A new
electrostatic potential energy functional was then defined for this solvated
protein-membrane system. We investigated the geometrical transformation
properties of the membrane surfaces under a smooth velocity field. These
properties allows us to apply the Hadamard-Zolesio structure theorem, and the
electrostatic forces on membrane surfaces can be computed as the shape
derivative of the electrostatic energy functional
- …