Related papers: Pattern formation by curvature-inducing proteins o…
Cell plasma membranes display a dramatically rich structural complexity characterized by functional sub-wavelength domains with specific lipid and protein composition. Under favorable experimental conditions, patterned morphologies can also…
We consider the lateral diffusion of a protein interacting with the curvature of the membrane. The interaction energy is minimized if the particle is at a membrane position with a certain curvature that agrees with the spontaneous curvature…
The intricate shapes of biological membranes such as tubules and membrane stacks are induced by proteins. In this article, we systematically investigate the membrane shapes induced by arc-shaped scaffolds such as proteins and protein…
Morphogenesis emerges from dynamic feedback among geometry, mechanics, and chemistry; however, disentangling these contributions in living systems remains challenging. Here, we focus on the interplay between geometry and mechanics by…
A model of lipid bilayers made of a mixture of two lipids with different average compositions on both leaflets, is developed. A Landau hamiltonian describing the lipid-lipid interactions on each leaflet, with two lipidic fields $\psi_1$ and…
Shapes of biological membranes are dynamically regulated in living cells. Although membrane shape deformation by proteins at thermal equilibrium has been extensively studied, nonequilibrium dynamics have been much less explored. Recently,…
Membrane tubulation is a ubiquitous process that occurs both at the plasma membrane and on the membranes of intracellular organelles. These tubulation events are known to be mediated by forces applied on the membrane either due to motor…
A model describing cell membranes as optimal shapes with regard to the $L^2$-deficit of their mean curvature to a given constant called spontaneous curvature is considered. It is shown that the corresponding energy functional is lower…
Living cells employ excitable reaction-diffusion waves for internal cellular functions, in which curvature-inducing proteins are often involved. However, the role of their mechanochemical coupling is not well understood. Here, we report the…
The assembly of banana-shaped rodlike proteins on membranes, and the associated membrane shape transformations, are investigated by analytical theory and coarse-grained simulations. The membrane-mediated interactions between two…
BAR superfamily proteins have a banana-shaped domain that causes the local bending of lipid membranes. We study as to how such a local anisotropic curvature induces effective interaction between proteins and changes the global shape of…
A continuum electromechanical model is proposed to describe the membrane curvature induced by electrostatic interactions in a solvated protein-membrane system. The model couples the macroscopic strain energy of membrane and the…
Proteins, by virtue of their central role in most biological processes, represent one of the key subjects of the study of molecular evolution. Inherent to the indispensability of proteins for living cells is the fact that a given protein…
In cell membranes, proteins and lipids are organized into sub-micrometric nanodomains of varying size, shape and composition, performing specific functions. Despite their biological importance, the detailed morphology of these nanodomains…
We examine the interactions between actively rotating proteins moving in a membrane. Experimental evidence suggests that such rotor proteins, like the ATP synthases of the inner mitochondrial membrane, can arrange themselves into lattices.…
Recent research has shown that motile cells can adapt their mode of propulsion to the mechanical properties of the environment in which they find themselves--crawling in some environments while swimming in others. The latter can involve…
Understanding the mechanical instabilities of two-dimensional membranes has strong connection to the subjects of structure instabilities, morphology control and materials failures. In this work, we investigate the plastic mechanism…
The assembly of curved protein rods on fluid membranes is studied using implicit-solvent meshless membrane simulations. As the rod curvature increases, the rods on a membrane tube assemble along the azimuthal direction first and…
Self-organization, the ability of a system of microscopically interacting entities to shape macroscopically ordered structures, is ubiquitous in Nature. Spatio-temporal patterns are abundantly observed in a large plethora of applications,…
We use the oscillating Min proteins of Escherichia coli as a prototype system to illustrate the current state and potential of modeling protein dynamics in space and time. We demonstrate how a theoretical approach has led to striking new…