Dynamics of biomembranes with active multiple-state inclusions

TL;DR

This paper models the nonequilibrium dynamics of biomembranes with active protein inclusions, revealing how energy input leads to spontaneous wave formation and spatial patterns in membrane curvature and protein density.

Contribution

It introduces a kinetic model capturing feedback between membrane curvature and active protein conformations, analyzing stability and wave emergence in biomembranes.

Findings

Uniform state becomes unstable above a critical energy supply rate.

Spontaneous stationary and traveling waves form with nanometer-scale wavelengths.

Waves exhibit frequencies around a thousand Hz or less.

Abstract

Nonequilibrium dynamics of biomembranes with active inclusions is considered. The inclusions represent protein molecules which perform cyclic internal conformational motions driven by the energy brought with ATP ligands. As protein conformations cyclically change, this induces hydrodynamical flows and also directly affects the local curvature of a membrane. On the other hand, variations in the local curvature of the membrane modify the transitions rates between conformational states in a protein, leading to a feedback in the considered system. Moreover, active inclusions can move diffusively through the membrane so that surface concentration varies. The kinetic description of this system is constructed and the stability of the uniform stationary state is analytically investigated. We show that, as the rate of supply of chemical energy is increased above a certain threshold, this uniform state becomes unstable and stationary or traveling waves spontaneously develop in the system. Such waves are accompanied by periodic spatial variation of membrane curvature and inclusion density. For typical parameter values, their characteristic wavelengths are of the order of hundreds of nanometers. For traveling waves, the characteristic frequency is of the order of a thousand Hz or less.