Membrane Remodeling Due to a Mixture of Multiple Types of Curvature Proteins.

Abstract

We present an extension of the Monte Carlo based mesoscopic membrane model, where the membrane is represented as a dynamically triangulated surface and the proteins are modeled as anisotropic inclusions formulated as in-plane nematic field variables adhering to the deformable elastic sheet. In the extended model, we have augmented the Hamiltonian to study membrane deformation due to a mixture of multiple types of curvature generating proteins. This feature opens the door for understanding how multiple kinds of curvature-generating proteins may be working in a coordinated manner to induce desired membrane morphologies. For example, among other things, we study membrane deformations and tubulation due to a mixture of positive and negative curvature proteins as mimics of various proteins from BAR domain family. We also study the effect of membrane anisotropy that manifests as differential binding affinity and organization of curvature proteins, leading to insights into the tightly regulated cargo sorting and transport processes. Our simulation results show different morphology of deformed vesicles that depend on membrane tension, the curvatures and number of the participating proteins as well as on protein-protein and membrane-protein interactions.