Sailing the surfactant sea: The effect of geometry and topology on
membrane hydrodynamics and on the fluctuations of Red Blood Cells

Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry

UCLA

We review the fundamental Saffman Delbruck theory of membrane hydrodynamics and show that their flat membrane results break down in the presence of membrane curvature. We explore the independent roles of Gaussian and mean curvature on particulate mobilities in membrane hydrodynamics to determine these purely geometric effects on particle mobilities. We apply this new analysis to experiments on the diffusion colloids trapped at a decorated droplet interface [Dinsmore et al.] and to the dynamics of a red blood cell membrane [Popescu et al.].