Abstract
The shapes and dynamics of vesicles are governed by the competition between curvature energy, geometrical constraints and viscous dissipation in the surrounding liquid. Recent progress in this field has occurred in three major areas. Firstly, detailed comparisons between theory and experiment have been performed for various shape transformations such as the budding transition, conformai diffusion of vesicles of higher genus, and starfish vesicles. Secondly, the novel experimental technique of using laser tweezers to excite membranes locally has revealed non-equilibrium properties, such as pearling of cylindrical vesicles, which can be explained theoretically using the concept of marginal stability. Thirdly, the quantitative study of shape fluctuation of adhering vesicles motivated a theoretical investigation which includes self-consistent shape-dependent steric repulsion.
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