Fission of a multiphase membrane tube

Abstract

A common mechanism for intracellular transport is the use of controlled deformations of the membrane to create spherical or tubular buds. While the basic physical properties of homogeneous membranes are relatively well-known, the effects of inhomogeneities within membranes are very much an active field of study. Membrane domains enriched in certain lipids in particular are attracting much attention, and in this Letter we investigate the effect of such domains on the shape and fate of membrane tubes. Recent experiments have demonstrated that forced lipid phase separation can trigger tube fission, and we demonstrate how this can be understood purely from the difference in elastic constants between the domains. Moreover, the proposed model predicts timescales for fission that agree well with experimental findings.

References in corpus (3)

• Formation and Interaction of Membrane Tubes
• Fluid-membrane tethers: minimal surfaces and elastic boundary layers
• Bi-Phasic Vesicles: instability induced by adsorption of proteins

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Accurate determination of elastic parameters for multi-component membranes
• Mesoscale computational studies of membrane bilayer remodeling by curvature-inducing proteins
• Main phase transition in lipid bilayers: phase coexistence and line tension in a soft, solvent-free, coarse-grained model
• Budding and Fission of a multiphase vesicle
• Active morphogenesis of patterned epithelial shells
• On the modeling of endocytosis in yeast
• Mechanochemical action of the dynamin protein
• Pearling instability of membrane tubes driven by curved proteins and actin polymerization
• Binding of curvature-inducing proteins onto tethered vesicles
• Spicules and the effect of rigid rods on enclosing membrane tubes
• Shapes of pored membranes
• Effective creases and contact angles between membrane domains with high spontaneous curvature