Conformation of a charged vesicle.

We report on the first systematic study of vesicle conformational change caused by Coulomb interaction between surface charges on a lipid vesicle. The equilibrium configuration of a charged vesicle is found, as the result of the competition between the local bending elastic energy and the long-range electrostatic interaction within the membrane where the counter-ion effects are neglected. Because of the Rayleigh instability, a charged vesicle undergoes conformational transitions as a function of the surface charge density.