Phase-transition- And dissipation-driven budding in lipid vesicles

Abstract

Membrane budding has been extensively studied as an equilibrium process attributed to the formation of coexisting domains or changes in the vesicle area-to-volume ratio (reduced volume). In contrast, non-equilibrium budding remains experimentally widely unexplored, especially when timescales fall well below the characteristic diffusion time of lipids, τ. We show that localized mechanical perturbations, initiated by driving giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) through their lipid main phase transition from the gel to the fluid phase, lead to the immediate formation of rapidly growing, localized, non-equilibrium buds when the transition takes place at short timescales (