Deformation of Equilibrium Shape of a Vesicle Induced by Injected Flexible Polymers

Abstract

Using field theoretic approach, we study equilibrium shape deformation of a vesicle induced by the presence of enclosed flexible polymers, which is a simple model of drug delivery system or endocytosis. To evaluate the total free energy of this system, it is necessary to calculate the bending elastic energy of the membrane, the conformation entropy of the polymers and their interactions. For this purpose, we combine phase field theory for the membrane and self-consistent field theory for the polymers. Simulations on this coupled model system for axiosymmetric shapes show a shape deformation of the vesicle induced by introducing polymers into it. We examined the dependence of the stability of the vesicle shape on the chain length of the polymers and the packing ratio of the vesicle. We present a simple model calculation that shows the relative stability of the prolate shape compared to the oblate shape.