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The self-assembly of highly anisotropic colloidal particles leads to a richvariety of morphologies, whose properties are just beginning to be understood.This article uses computer simulations to probe a particle-scale perturbationof a commonly studied colloidal assembly, a monolayer membrane composed ofrodlike fd viruses in the presence of a polymer depletant. Motivated byexperiments currently in progress, we simulate the interaction between amicrotubule and a monolayer membrane as the microtubule "pokes" and penetratesthe membrane face-on. Both the viruses and the microtubule are modeled as hardspherocylinders of the same diameter, while the depletant is modeled usingghost spheres. We find that the force exerted on the microtubule by themembrane is zero either when the microtubule is completely outside the membraneor when it has fully penetrated the membrane. The microtubule is initiallyrepelled by the membrane as it begins to penetrate but experiences anattractive force as it penetrates further. We assess the roles played bytranslational and rotational fluctuations of the viruses and the osmoticpressure of the polymer depletant. We find that rotational fluctuations play amore important role than the translational ones. The dependence on the osmoticpressure of the depletant of the width and height of the repulsive barrier andthe depth of the attractive potential well is consistent with the assumeddepletion-induced attractive interaction between the microtubule and viruses.We discuss the relevance of these studies to the experimental investigations.\end{abstract}

Probing a self-assembled fd virus membrane with a microtubule