A continuum model of lipid bilayers
- 1 February 2004
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in European Journal of Applied Mathematics
- Vol. 15 (4) , 487-508
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0956792504005613
Abstract
We study a one-dimensional continuum model for lipid bilayers. The system consists of water and lipid molecules; lipid molecules are represented by two ‘beads’, a head bead and a tail bead, connected by a rigid rod. We derive a simplified model for such a system, in which we only take into account the effects of entropy and hydrophilic/hydrophobic interactions. We show that for this simple model membrane-like structures exist for certain choices of the parameters, and numerical calculations suggest that they are stable.Keywords
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