Kawamoto, ShuheiNakamura, TakenobuNielsen, Steven O.Shinoda, Wataru2014-07-222014-07-222013-07-182013-07-182013-03-070021-9606http://hdl.handle.net/10735.1/3766A new method is proposed to estimate the bending rigidity of lipid membranes from molecular dynamics simulations. An external cylindrical guiding potential is used to impose a sinusoidal deformation to a planar membrane. The bending rigidity is obtained from the mean force acting on the cylinder by calibrating against a discretized Helfrich model that accounts for thermal fluctuations of the membrane surface. The method has been successfully applied to a dimyristoyl phosphatidylcholine bilayer simulated with a coarse-grained model. A well-converged bending rigidity was obtained for the tension-free membrane and showed reasonable agreement with that obtained from the height fluctuation spectrum.©2013 AIP Publishing LLCBending (metal-work)Deformations (Mechanics)Fluctuations (Physics)LecithinLipid membranesMembranes (Technology)Molecular dynamics--Simulation methodsTextKawamoto, Shuhei, Takenobu Nakamura, Steven O. Nielsen, and Wataru Shinoda. 2013. "A guiding potential method for evaluating the bending rigidity of tensionless lipid membranes from molecular simulation." The Journal of Chemical Physics 139(034108): 1-10.13934108