Introduction
Theoretical methods used to describe biological membranes are distinguished by the different length scales on which they examine the system. The method which has been used to a great extent in the past is a phenomenological one in which the length scale of interest is sufficiently large that all the details of the molecules which make up the membrane can be ignored. Consequently, the membrane is described as a two-dimensional sheet of which the free energy can be characterized by a few elastic constants. The description has been quite successful in the regime of its validity. The text of Safran (2003) can be consulted for a good description and some applications. Its limitations are that changes in the membrane on small scales, typically the thickness of the membrane itself, are not described reliably, and the effects of molecular architecture are not clear. Presumably the architecture affects the elastic constants, but the calculation of the latter from the former is a...
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Schick, M. (2013). Membranes: A Field-Theoretic Description. In: Roberts, G.C.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Biophysics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16712-6_571
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16712-6_571
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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