Lattice analogy of area-difference elasticity model for lipid-detergent bilayer vesiculation

TL;DR

This paper investigates vesiculation in lipid-detergent solutions using small-angle neutron scattering and models the process with a lattice analogy of the area-difference elasticity model, employing Monte Carlo simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a lattice analogy approach to the area-difference elasticity model for lipid bilayer vesiculation, linking microscopic and macroscopic scales via Monte Carlo methods.

Findings

Vesiculation involves a jump-like temperature increase and detergent concentration rise.

Numerical estimations of vesicle shape parameters were achieved.

The model connects microscopic surface behavior with macroscopic elasticity coefficients.

Abstract

The vesiculation process was examined in the lipid-detergent solution (dimyristoyl-sn-glycero-phoshatidylcholine/octaethylleneglycol n-dodecyl ether/water), using small-angle neutron scattering experiments \cite{1}. When observing vesiculation proceeds from rod-like micelles to unilamellar vesicles, the transformation is induced by jump-like temperature increase and a monotonic increase in detergent concentration. Our numerical estimations of the vesicle shape parameters (the elasticity coefficients and its fraction on a macroscopic scale) are based upon the area-difference elasticity model \cite{2, 3}. Thus, we composed the numerical Monte Carlo method, which connects the macroscopic and microscopic scales by the concept of self-avoiding random surfaces.