Electrostatic Edge Instability of Lipid Membranes

This paper considers the effect of electrostatics on the stability of a charged membrane. We show that at low ionic strength and high surface charge density, repulsion between charges on the membrane renders it unstable to the formation of holes. A free straight edge is unstable to modulations with wavelength longer than the Debye screening length. Hence at low ionic strength, membranes will disintegrate into vesicles. We use these results to interpret stable holes in red blood cell ghosts (Steck et. al., Science 168:255(1970)).