Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 238101 (2002) [4 pages]Formation and Interaction of Membrane TubesSee Also: Erratum Received 8 February 2002; published 28 May 2002 We show that the formation of membrane tubes (or membrane tethers), which is a crucial step in many biological processes, is highly nontrivial and involves first-order shape transitions. The force exerted by an emerging tube is a nonmonotonic function of its length. We point out that tubes attract each other, which eventually leads to their coalescence. We also show that detached tubes behave like semiflexible filaments with a rather short persistence length. We suggest that these properties play an important role in the formation and structure of tubular organelles. © 2002 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.238101
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.238101
PACS:
87.16.Dg, 82.70.-y, 87.68.+z
See AlsoErratum: Imre Derényi, Frank Jülicher, and Jacques Prost, Erratum: Formation and Interaction of Membrane Tubes [Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 238101 (2002)], Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 209901 (2002). |
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