Membrane-mediated interactions

Abstract

Interactions mediated by the cell membrane between inclusions, such as membrane proteins or antimicrobial peptides, play important roles in their biological activity. They also constitute a fascinating challenge for physicists, since they test the boundaries of our understanding of self-assembled lipid membranes, which are remarkable examples of two-dimensional complex fluids. Inclusions can couple to various degrees of freedom of the membrane, resulting in different types of interactions. In this chapter, we review the membrane-mediated interactions that arise from direct constraints imposed by inclusions on the shape of the membrane. These effects are generic and do not depend on specific chemical interactions. Hence, they can be studied using coarse-grained soft matter descriptions. We deal with long-range membrane-mediated interactions due to the constraints imposed by inclusions on membrane curvature and on its fluctuations. We also discuss the shorter-range interactions that arise from the constraints on membrane thickness imposed by inclusions presenting a hydrophobic mismatch with the membrane.

38 pages, 10 figures, pre-submission version. In: Bassereau P., Sens P. (eds) Physics of Biological Membranes. Springer, Cham

References in corpus (19)

• The Casimir effect: from quantum to critical fluctuations
• The Casimir force and the quantum theory of lossy optical cavities
• Casimir Forces between Compact Objects: I. The Scalar Case
• Fluid membranes can drive linear aggregation of adsorbed spherical nanoparticles
• Membrane mediated aggregation of curvature inducing nematogens and membrane tubulation
• Membrane-Protein Interactions in a Generic Coarse-Grained Model for Lipid Bilayers
• Interface mediated interactions between particles -- a geometrical approach
• Geometry of surface mediated interactions
• The Importance of Boundary Conditions for Fluctuation Induced Forces between Colloids at Interfaces
• Fluctuations of the Casimir-like force between two membrane inclusions
• Bilayer elasticity at the nanoscale: the need for new terms
• Interaction of Alamethicin Pores in DMPC Bilayers
• Repulsion Between Inorganic Particles Inserted Within Surfactant Bilayers
• Forces exerted by a correlated fluid on embedded inclusions
• Anisotropies in thermal Casimir interactions: ellipsoidal colloids trapped at a fluid interface
• Membrane-mediated repulsion between gramicidin pores
• The interaction of hybrid nanoparticles inserted within surfactant bilayers
• Signatures of protein structure in the cooperative gating of mechanosensitive ion channels
• Interface-mediated interactions: Entropic forces of curved membranes