Time: 3:15-4:15pm, Wednesday, November 6
Room: 318 DBRT
Host: Mark S. Alber (Mathematics)

Speaker: Dr. Yi Jiang
From: Theoretical Division and Center For Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Title: Modeling Lipid Membrane

Abstract
All Biological membranes have similar structures: lipid bilayers with membrane proteins. Within a coupled-field Ginzburg-Landau model we study phase separation and accompanying shape deformation on a membrane.

Treating lipid membranes as an elastic surface shows how phase separation of lipid molecules deforms membranes and vesicles. We also investigate the effect of inclusions, e.g. proteins, on membrane morphology. These models provide qualitative understanding of membranes but lack biochemical information, whereas atomic scale molecular dynamics simulations provide quantitative details of the membranes but are limited by computation resources. Time permitting, I shall briefly review current efforts in developing mesoscopic membrane models, which are a good compromise between efficiency and detail, showing great potential for large scale realistic modeling of lipid membranes.