Membrane remodelling

Lipid bilayers are thin and highly flexible sheets and provide a structural basis for biological membranes. The simulation of small membrane patches in the nanometer regime provides estimates for their local properties, which determine the membrane behavior in the micrometer regime.

Fusion of biological membranes is an essential process in many areas of cell biology, ranging from vesicular trafficking and synaptic transmission to cell-cell fusion and viral fusion. Lipid vesicles, simplified model systems for biological membranes, can also be induced to fuse by a variety of methods. We have used dissipative particle dynamics (DPD), to probe the molecular details and energy barriers of the fusion process.

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