Theory of vesicle budding

Abstract

The formation of a small daughter vesicle from a large mother vesicle is considered, the two being connected by a narrow constriction. This budding is achieved by either decreasing the enclosed volume or increasing the membrane spontaneous curvature of a nearly spherical vesicle while the other quantity and the membrane area are constant. The activation energy of the discontinuous transition is identified and found to decrease to zero as the respective parameter change progresses.