Stability of biphasic vesicles with membrane embedded proteins

The basic physical properties of homogeneous membranes are relatively well known, while the effects of inhomogeneities with membranes are very much an active field of study. In this paper, a biphasic lipid vesicle with membrane embedded proteins is investigated. To take into account the influences of the proteins, a simple phenomenological coupling between the local fraction of proteins and the mean curvature square is suggested. By minimizing the energy of system, the E-L equations and boundary conditions are obtained and solved analytically for vesicle with a simple shape. Besides, stability phase diagrams and stability factor are put forward by linear perturbation analysis. Our results show two different situations which are strongly dependent on the nature of the proteins: a regime of easy instability when the proteins are strongly coupled to the membrane and a regime of difficult instability. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.