TY - JOUR
T1 - Poisson property of the occurrence of flip-flops in a model membrane
AU - Arai, Noriyoshi
AU - Akimoto, Takuma
AU - Yamamoto, Eiji
AU - Yasui, Masato
AU - Yasuoka, Kenji
PY - 2014/2/14
Y1 - 2014/2/14
N2 - How do lipid molecules in membranes perform a flip-flop? The flip-flops of lipid molecules play a crucial role in the formation and flexibility of membranes. However, little has been determined about the behavior of flip-flops, either experimentally, or in molecular dynamics simulations. Here, we provide numerical results of the flip-flops of model lipid molecules in a model membrane and investigate the statistical properties, using millisecond-order coarse-grained molecular simulations (dissipative particle dynamics). We find that there are three different ways of flip-flops, which can be clearly characterized by their paths on the free energy surface. Furthermore, we found that the probability of the number of the flip-flops is well fitted by the Poisson distribution, and the probability density function for the inter-occurrence times of flip-flops coincides with that of the forward recurrence times. These results indicate that the occurrence of flip-flops is a Poisson process, which will play an important role in the flexibilities of membranes.
AB - How do lipid molecules in membranes perform a flip-flop? The flip-flops of lipid molecules play a crucial role in the formation and flexibility of membranes. However, little has been determined about the behavior of flip-flops, either experimentally, or in molecular dynamics simulations. Here, we provide numerical results of the flip-flops of model lipid molecules in a model membrane and investigate the statistical properties, using millisecond-order coarse-grained molecular simulations (dissipative particle dynamics). We find that there are three different ways of flip-flops, which can be clearly characterized by their paths on the free energy surface. Furthermore, we found that the probability of the number of the flip-flops is well fitted by the Poisson distribution, and the probability density function for the inter-occurrence times of flip-flops coincides with that of the forward recurrence times. These results indicate that the occurrence of flip-flops is a Poisson process, which will play an important role in the flexibilities of membranes.
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U2 - 10.1063/1.4863330
DO - 10.1063/1.4863330
M3 - Article
C2 - 24527934
AN - SCOPUS:84907210994
SN - 0021-9606
VL - 140
JO - Journal of Chemical Physics
JF - Journal of Chemical Physics
IS - 6
M1 - 064901
ER -