2023/07/24 by Curt Waltmann, Waltmann, Curt, Ahis Shrestha +3
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Engineering · Environmental Science · #Advanced Materials and Mechanics #Bacteriophages and microbial interactions #Biochemical and Structural Characterization #Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) #Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2307.12834
openalex publication_date 2023/07/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Recent findings suggest that shell protein distribution and morphology of bacterial microcompartments regulate the chemical fluxes facilitating reactions which dictate their biological function. We explore how the morphology and component patterning are coupled through the competition of mean and Gaussian bending energies in multicomponent elastic shells that form three component irregular polyhedra. We observe two softer components with lower bending rigidities allocate on the edges and vertices while the harder component occupies the faces. When subjected to a non-zero interfacial line tension, the two softer components further separate and pattern into subdomains that are mediated by the Gaussian curvature. We find that this degree of fractionation is maximized when there is a weaker line tension and when the ratio of bending rigidities between the two softer domains ≈ 2. Our results reveal a patterning mechanism in multicomponent shells that can capture the observed morphologies of bacterial microcompartments and, moreover, can be realized in synthetic vesicles.