Implicit model to capture electrostatic features of membrane environment
Fig 2
Coulomb electrostatic energy due to the lipid bilayers in the membrane.
(a) Membrane-dependent electrostatics potential: The energy increases when entering the bilayer and at close atom pair distances. Green arrows indicate the direction of increasing energy. (b) Dependence of the dielectric constant ε on fraction of hydration fhyd and atom-pair distance ri,j. The different dielectric constants are colored from low (dark blue) to high (yellow). (c) Variation of the membrane dielectric-dependent electrostatics energy as a function of fractional hydration fhyd and atom-pair distance ri,j. Each grid point corresponds to an energy calculated for point charges with opposing signs, and the energy varies from strong (dark blue) to weak (yellow).