J. Phys. Chem. B 2006, 110, 24157-24164
24157
Investigation of Finite System-Size Effects in Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Lipid Bilayers Francisco Castro-Roma´ n,†,§ Ryan W. Benz,‡ Stephen H. White,*,† and Douglas J. Tobias*,‡ Department of Physiology and Biophysics and Department of Chemistry, UniVersity of California, IrVine, California 92697-2025 ReceiVed: July 25, 2006; In Final Form: September 20, 2006
In the absence of external stress, the surface tension of a lipid membrane vanishes at equilibrium, and the membrane exhibits long wavelength undulations that can be described as elastic (as opposed to tensiondominated) deformations. These long wavelength fluctuations are generally suppressed in molecular dynamics simulations of membranes, which have typically been carried out on membrane patches with areas
