Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 104, Issue 3, Pages 761-765Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0607633104
Keywords
lipid vesicle; vesicle doublet; sigmoid-contact doublet; rouleau
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Using the membrane-bending elasticity theory and a simple effective model of adhesion, we study the morphology of lipid vesicle doublets. In the weak adhesion regime, we find flat-contact axi-symmetric doublets, whereas at large adhesion strengths, the vesicle aggregates are nonaxisymmetric and characterized by a sigmoidally curved, S-shaped contact zone with a single invagination and a complementary evagination on each vesicle. The sigmoid-contact doublets agree very well with the experimentally observed shapes of erythrocyte aggregates. Our results show that in identical vesicles with large to moderate surf ace-to-volume ratio, the sigmoid-contact shape is the only bound morphology. We also discuss the role of sigmoid contacts in the formation of multicellular aggregates such as erythrocyte rouleaux.
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