Lipid bilayer membrane systems represent an interesting and important class of soft materials, ranging from supported membranes (in contact with an aqueous solvent) to synthetic vesicles (enveloping homogeneous or heterogeneous liquid phases) to living cells.  Due to their structure, the leaflets comprising the bilayer membrane are strongly coupled to their environments and susceptible to thermo-mechanical perturbations. This coupling results in several related intriguing phenomena, such as registration of compositional lipid domains across the two bilayer leaflets in supported membranes or vesicles, effect of solvent hydrodynamics on critical and coarsening behavior of bilayer membranes, spatial correlation of compositional lipid membrane domains with co-existing bulk phases in giant vesicles, and the formation of dynamic liquid-like protein aggregates within the bulk cytoplasm and their interaction with membrane proteins.In this talk, I will provide an overview of our on-going studies of coupled phase transition phenomena in lipid membrane systems. In particular, I will discuss the dynamics of compositional lipid domains within symmetric leaflets, and their interaction with an aqueous bulk phase which itself may undergo a demixing transition.

Coupled phase transition phenomena in lipid bilayer membrane systems

245th National Meeting (2013)

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