Excitable reaction-diffusion waves of curvature-inducing proteins on deformable membrane tubes

Abstract

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 membrane deformation induced by the excitable reaction-diffusion waves of curvature-inducing proteins and the alternation in the waves due to the deformation, using a coarse-grained simulation of tubular membranes with a modified FitzHugh--Nagumo model. Protein-propagating waves deform tubular membranes, and large deformations induce budding and erase waves. The wave speed and shape are determined by a combination of membrane deformation and spatial distribution of the curvature-inducing protein. Waves are also undulated in the azimuthal direction depending on the condition. Rotationally symmetric waves locally deform the tubes into a symmetric shape but maintain a straight shape on average. Our simulation method can be applied to other chemical reaction models and used to investigate various biomembrane phenomena.

12 pages, 15 figures

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Binding of Curvature-Inducing Proteins onto Biomembranes
• Nonequilibrium Membrane Dynamics Induced by Active Protein Interactions and Chemical Reactions: A Review
• Membrane domain formation induced by binding/unbinding of curvature-inducing molecules onto both membrane surfaces
• Curvature-sensing and generation by membrane proteins: a review
• Spatiotemporal pattern formation of membranes induced by surface molecular binding/unbinding
• Turing patterns on polymerized membranes: a coarse-grained lattice modelling with internal degree of freedom for polymer direction