Two-Dimensional Ordering of Bacteriorhodopsins in a Lipid Bilayer and Effects Caused by Repulsive Core between Lipid Molecules on Lateral Depletion Interaction: A Study based on a Thermodynamic Perturbation Theory

Abstract

Using binary hard disk mixture models, we studied the two-dimensional ordering of bacteriorhodopsins in a lipid bilayer. The phase diagrams were calculated using the thermodynamic perturbation theory. We examined two types of effective interactions to discuss the lateral depletion effects caused by repulsive core interaction between lipid molecules. The results indicate that the core repulsions drastically broaden the coexistence region for the fluid--ordered phase.