Specific lipid environments are necessary for the establishment of protein signalling platforms in membranes, yet their origin has been highly debated. We present a continuum, exactly solvable model of protein induced local demixing of lipid membranes. The coupling between a local composition and a local thickness of the membrane induces lipid domains around inclusions with hydrophobic mismatch, even for temperatures above the miscibility critical point of the membrane. The model qualitatively explains the experimentally observed formation of lipid domains induced by anchoring of reconstituted actin in flat supported lipid bilayers.
@article{arxiv.2110.14497,
title = {Protein induced lipid demixing in homogeneous membranes},
author = {Bernd Henning Stumpf and Piotr Nowakowski and Christian Eggeling and Anna Maciołek and Ana-Sunčana Smith},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.14497},
year = {2021}
}