A computational study of lateral phase separation in biological membranes
For researchers studying membrane biophysics, this work provides a flexible numerical framework for simulating phase separation on arbitrary membrane geometries, but the findings are incremental as they confirm expected behavior without quantitative breakthroughs.
This study develops and compares conservative and non-conservative phase-field models for simulating lateral phase separation in biological membranes, using an unfitted finite element method to handle complex shapes. The results show that both models produce similar coarsening dynamics and converge to the same equilibrium, with the non-conservative model being computationally more efficient.
Conservative and non-conservative phase-field models are considered for the numerical simulation of lateral phase separation and coarsening in biological membranes. An unfitted finite element method is devised for these models to allow for a flexible treatment of complex shapes in the absence of an explicit surface parametrization. For a set of biologically relevant shapes and parameter values, the paper compares the dynamic coarsening produced by conservative and non-conservative numerical models, its dependence on certain geometric characteristics and convergence to the final equilibrium