FIGURE 8.

Two-body potential energy w₂(r) as a function of distance r between two negatively mismatched inclusions. Both lines have η = 0, solid line has k_G as in Table 1, whereas dashed line has k_G = 0 and corresponds to the Hamiltonian of A-E. All other membrane parameters are as in Table 1. Here k_BT corresponds to the temperature used in the coarse-grained molecular simulations of the previous sections (i.e., k_c ∼ 35 k_BT). Protein parameters are R= 0.75 nm, t_(R)/t₀ = −0.20. The theory of A-E predicts that the free energy minimum is achieved at a finite spacing between inclusions, whereas for the theory presented in this article, the free energy minimum is achieved by complete dimerization.