2021/04/02 by Arijit Mahapatra, Mahapatra, Arijit, David Saintillan +3 · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #FOS: Physical sciences #Lipid Membrane Structure and Behavior #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2104.01243
openalex publication_date 2021/04/02 · openalex created_date 2022/07/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Membrane bending is an extensively studied problem from both modeling and\nexperimental perspectives because of the wide implications of curvature\ngeneration in cell biology. Many of the curvature generating aspects in\nmembranes can be attributed to interactions between proteins and membranes.\nThese interactions include protein diffusion and formation of aggregates due to\nprotein-protein interactions in the plane of the membrane. Recently, we\ndeveloped a model that couples the in-plane flow of lipids and diffusion of\nproteins with the out-of-plane bending of the membrane. Building on this work,\nhere, we focus on the role of explicit aggregation of proteins on the surface\nof the membrane in the presence of membrane bending and diffusion. We develop a\ncomprehensive framework that includes lipid flow, membrane bending, the entropy\nof protein distribution, along with an explicit aggregation potential and\nderive the governing equations for the coupled system. We compare this\nframework to the Cahn-Hillard formalism to predict the regimes in which the\nproteins form patterns on the membrane. We demonstrate the utility of this\nmodel using numerical simulations to predict how aggregation and diffusion,\nwhen coupled with curvature generation, can alter the landscape of\nmembrane-protein interactions.\n