Session A8 - Focus Session: Neutron Scattering and Other Studies of Phospholipids.
FOCUS session, Monday morning, March 22
510A, Palais des Congres
We present a theoretical treatment and simulation algorithm for the dynamics of biological membranes. For our purposes, the lipid bilayer is treated as a continuous Helfrich elastic surface in the presence of hydrodynamic coupling to the surrounding solvent. We can additionally add general harmonic perturbations, which, in the limit of localized and strong interactions, can be used to pin the membrane to intracellular/intercellular structures. We consider the case of pinning to the cytoskeleton and use such a model to estimate the macroscopic diffusion constant for band 3 protein on the surface of human erythrocytes. Comparison to experimental results suggests that thermal undulations of the membrane surface should play a significant role in protein mobility on the red blood cell.