Endocytosis against high turgor pressure is made easier by partial coating and freely rotating base

Abstract

During clathrin-mediated endocytosis, a patch of flat plasma membrane is deformed into a vesicle. In walled cells, such as plants and fungi, the turgor pressure is high and pushes the membrane against the cell wall, thus hindering membrane internalization. In this work, we study how a patch of membrane is deformed against turgor pressure by force and by curvature-generating proteins. We show that a large amount of force is needed to merely start deforming the membrane and an even larger force is needed to pull a membrane tube. The magnitude of these forces strongly depends on how the base of the membrane is constrained and how the membrane is coated with curvature-generating proteins. In particular, these forces can be reduced by partially, but not fully, coating the membrane patch with curvature-generating proteins. Our theoretical results show excellent agreement with experimental data.