Describing the elasticity of inhomogeneous lipid membranes

Lipid elasticity has been successfully described for decades using continuum theory. However, the elastic constants involved in determining the free energy associated with elastic deformations are still hardly accessible in experiments and simulations, particularly for realistic complex systems. I will discuss an approach we have developed to derive these constants from molecular simulations based on real-space fluctuation analysis. Because the method is local in nature it can precisely account for spatial inhomogeneity in lipid membranes. The success of this method has further inspired us to apply a similar approach to also derive the (seemingly unrelated) hydrogen bond free energy.