Poisson property of the occurrence of flip-flops in a model membrane

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12 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

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.

Original languageEnglish
Article number064901
JournalJournal of Chemical Physics
Volume140
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2014 Feb 14

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Physics and Astronomy(all)
  • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry

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