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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Pandey, Vikash, Mitra, Dhrubaditya
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.12211
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author Pandey, Vikash
Mitra, Dhrubaditya
author_facet Pandey, Vikash
Mitra, Dhrubaditya
contents From the perspective of physical properties, the cell membrane is an exotic two-dimensional material that has a dual nature: it exhibits characteristics of fluids, i.e., lipid molecules show lateral diffusion, while also demonstrating properties of solids, evidenced by a non-zero shear modulus. We construct a model for such a $\textit{semi-solid}$ $\textit{membrane}$. Our model is a fluctuating randomly triangulated mesh with two different kinds of nodes. The solid nodes never change their neighbors, while the fluid nodes do. As the area fraction occupied by the solid nodes ($Φ$) is increased the motion of fluid nodes transition from diffusion to localization via subdiffusion. Next, the solid nodes are pinned to mimic the pinning of the plasma membrane to the cytoskeleton. For the pinned membrane, there exists a range of $Φ$ over which the model has both a non-zero shear modulus and a non-zero lateral diffusivity. The bending modulus, measured through the spectrum of height fluctuations remains unchanged.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_12211
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Anomalous diffusion and effective shear modulus in a semi-solid membrane
Pandey, Vikash
Mitra, Dhrubaditya
Soft Condensed Matter
Biological Physics
From the perspective of physical properties, the cell membrane is an exotic two-dimensional material that has a dual nature: it exhibits characteristics of fluids, i.e., lipid molecules show lateral diffusion, while also demonstrating properties of solids, evidenced by a non-zero shear modulus. We construct a model for such a $\textit{semi-solid}$ $\textit{membrane}$. Our model is a fluctuating randomly triangulated mesh with two different kinds of nodes. The solid nodes never change their neighbors, while the fluid nodes do. As the area fraction occupied by the solid nodes ($Φ$) is increased the motion of fluid nodes transition from diffusion to localization via subdiffusion. Next, the solid nodes are pinned to mimic the pinning of the plasma membrane to the cytoskeleton. For the pinned membrane, there exists a range of $Φ$ over which the model has both a non-zero shear modulus and a non-zero lateral diffusivity. The bending modulus, measured through the spectrum of height fluctuations remains unchanged.
title Anomalous diffusion and effective shear modulus in a semi-solid membrane
topic Soft Condensed Matter
Biological Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.12211