Formation and Interaction of Membrane Tubes
- 28 May 2002
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review Letters
- Vol. 88 (23), 238101
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.88.238101
Abstract
We show that the formation of membrane tubes (or membrane tethers), which is a crucial step in many biological processes, is highly nontrivial and involves first-order shape transitions. The force exerted by an emerging tube is a nonmonotonic function of its length. We point out that tubes attract each other, which eventually leads to their coalescence. We also show that detached tubes behave like semiflexible filaments with a rather short persistence length. We suggest that these properties play an important role in the formation and structure of tubular organelles.Keywords
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