title: Diffusion on ruffled membrane surfaces.
abstract: We present a position Langevin equation for overdamped particle motion on rough two-dimensional surfaces. A Brownian dynamics algorithm is suggested to evolve this equation numerically, allowing for the prediction of effective (projected) diffusion coefficients over corrugated surfaces. In the case of static surface roughness, we find that a simple area-scaling prediction for the projected diffusion coefficient leads to seemingly quantitative agreement with numerical results. To study the effect of dynamic surface evolution on the diffusive process, we consider particle diffusion over a thermally fluctuating elastic membrane. Surface fluctuation has the effect of increasing the effective diffusivity toward a limiting annealed-surface value discussed previously. We argue that protein motion over cell surfaces spans a variety of physical regimes, making it impossible to identify a single approximation scheme appropriate to all measurements of interest.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106-9530, USA.
authors.forename: Ali
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Naji
authors.forename: Frank L H
authors.initials: FL
authors.lastname: Brown
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001703:Biophysics / Q000379:methods*; D002462:Cell Membrane / Q000378:metabolism*; D002627:Chemistry, Physical / Q000379:methods*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004058:Diffusion; D008560:Membrane Fluidity; D015233:Models, Statistical; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D008968:Molecular Conformation; D011336:Probability; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry; D013499:Surface Properties
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins