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Published June 1, 2011 | Published + Accepted Version
Journal Article Open

Elastic energy of polyhedral bilayer vesicles

Abstract

In recent experiments [M. Dubois, B. Demé, T. Gulik-Krzywicki, J.-C. Dedieu, C. Vautrin, S. Désert, E. Perez, and T. Zemb, Nature (London) 411, 672 (2001)] the spontaneous formation of hollow bilayer vesicles with polyhedral symmetry has been observed. On the basis of the experimental phenomenology it was suggested [M. Dubois, V. Lizunov, A. Meister, T. Gulik-Krzywicki, J. M. Verbavatz, E. Perez, J. Zimmerberg, and T. Zemb, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101, 15082 (2004)] that the mechanism for the formation of bilayer polyhedra is minimization of elastic bending energy. Motivated by these experiments, we study the elastic bending energy of polyhedral bilayer vesicles. In agreement with experiments, and provided that excess amphiphiles exhibiting spontaneous curvature are present in sufficient quantity, we find that polyhedral bilayer vesicles can indeed be energetically favorable compared to spherical bilayer vesicles. Consistent with experimental observations we also find that the bending energy associated with the vertices of bilayer polyhedra can be locally reduced through the formation of pores. However, the stabilization of polyhedral bilayer vesicles over spherical bilayer vesicles relies crucially on molecular segregation of excess amphiphiles along the ridges rather than the vertices of bilayer polyhedra. Furthermore, our analysis implies that, contrary to what has been suggested on the basis of experiments, the icosahedron does not minimize elastic bending energy among arbitrary polyhedral shapes and sizes. Instead, we find that, for large polyhedron sizes, the snub dodecahedron and the snub cube both have lower total bending energies than the icosahedron.

Additional Information

© 2011 American Physical Society. Received 15 February 2011; published 1 June 2011. This work was supported by a Collaborative Innovation Award of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the National Institutes of Health through NIH Award No. R01GM084211 and the Director's Pioneer Award. We thank A. Agrawal, M. D. Betterton, M. B. Jackson, W. S. Klug, R. W. Pastor, T. R. Powers, D. C. Rees, M. H. B. Stowell, D. P. Tieleman, T. S. Ursell, D. Van Valen, and H. Yin for helpful comments.

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Published - Haselwandter2011p14121Phys_Rev_E.pdf

Accepted Version - nihms-331198.pdf

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