Nonequilibrium patterns and shape fluctuations in reactive membranes

TL;DR

This paper introduces a kinetic model for reactive membranes that predicts nonequilibrium pattern formation and shape fluctuations, providing insights into membrane behavior under reactive and compositional conditions.

Contribution

It presents a novel kinetic model coupling composition and curvature in reactive bilayers, analyzing pattern formation and shape fluctuations in nonequilibrium conditions.

Findings

Stationary composition/curvature patterns form when components are immiscible.

Reactive processes determine the size of these patterns.

Shape fluctuation correlations can be predicted for micropipet experiments.

Abstract

A simple kinetic model of a two-component deformable and reactive bilayer is presented. The two differently shaped components are interconverted by a nonequilibrium reaction, and a phenomenological coupling between local composition and curvature is proposed. When the two components are not miscible, linear stability analysis predicts, and numerical simulations show, the formation of stationary nonequilibrium composition/curvature patterns whose typical size is determined by the reactive process. For miscible components, a linearization of the dynamic equations is performed in order to evaluate the correlation function for shape fluctuations from which the behavior of these systems in micropipet aspiration experiments can be predicted.