Membrane-Protein Interactions in a Generic Coarse-Grained Model for Lipid Bilayers

We study membrane-protein interactions and membrane-mediated protein-protein interactions by Monte Carlo simulations of a generic coarse-grained model for lipid bilayers with cylindrical hydrophobic inclusions. The strength of the hydrophobic force and the hydrophobic thickness of the proteins are systematically varied. The results are compared with analytical predictions of two popular analytical theories: The Landau-de Gennes theory and the elastic theory. The elastic theory provides an excellent description of the fluctuation spectra of pure membranes and successfully reproduces the deformation profiles of membranes around single proteins. However, its prediction for the potential of mean force between proteins is not compatible with the simulation data for large distances. The simulations show that the lipid-mediated interactions are governed by five competing factors: Direct interactions, lipid-induced depletion interactions, lipid bridging, lipid packing, and a smooth long-range contribution. The mechanisms leading to "hydrophobic mismatch" interactions are critically analyzed.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Biophysical Journa

Interpreting Membrane Scattering Experiments at the Mesoscale: The Contribution of Dissipation within the Bilayer

Neutron spin-echo spectroscopy provides a means to study membrane undulation dynamics over length scales roughly spanning 10–100 nanometers. Modern interpretation of these measurements relies on the theoretical predictions of Zilman and Granek; however, it is necessary to introduce an anomalously large solvent viscosity within this theory to obtain quantitative agreement with experiment. An extended theoretical treatment is presented that includes the effects of internal dissipation within the bilayer. Within the length and time regimes appropriate to neutron spin-echo experiments, the results of Zilman and Granek are largely recovered, except that the bilayer curvature modulus κ appearing in their theory must be replaced with an effective dynamic curvature modulus κ˜=κ+2d2km, where d is a distance comparable to the monolayer thickness (the height of the neutral surface from bilayer midplane) and km is the monolayer compressibility modulus. Direct comparison between theory and experiment becomes possible without any rescaling of physical parameters

Lipid Bilayer Domain Fluctuations as a Probe of Membrane Viscosity

We argue that membrane viscosity, ηm, plays a prominent role in the thermal fluctuation dynamics of micron-scale lipid domains. A theoretical expression is presented for the timescales of domain shape relaxation, which reduces to the well-known ηm = 0 result of Stone and McConnell in the limit of large domain sizes. Experimental measurements of domain dynamics on the surface of ternary phospholipid and cholesterol vesicles confirm the theoretical results and suggest domain flicker spectroscopy as a convenient means to simultaneously measure both the line tension, σ, and the membrane viscosity, ηm, governing the behavior of individual lipid domains