Professor Jay T. Groves
Department of Chemistry
UC Berkeley
Berkeley CA 94720

Title:
Curvature as a mechanism of mechanical force transduction in cell membranes.

Abstract:
Cell membranes are not flat, and their curved shapes lead to significant mechanical bending strains that propagate long distances through the membrane. I will discuss a series of recent experimental investigations in which have we have explored static mechanical and dynamical aspects of membrane curvature in lipid bilayer systems. One omphasis is the impact of curvature mediated forces on ordering of phase-separated membrane domains and on superstructure formation (e.g. stripe phases). Such studies of membrane curvature have necesitated the utilization of new types of interferometric techniques capable of resolving membrane topography with nanometers of resolution in an imaging mode. I will also discuss our recent application of fluorescence interference microscopy to perform spatio-temporal thermal fluctuation spectroscopy on membranes.