Influence of Fluctuating Membranes on Self-Assembly of Patchy Colloids

TL;DR

This study uses computational modeling to explore how fluctuating membranes influence the self-assembly of patchy colloids, revealing complex effects of membrane stiffness on biological structure formation.

Contribution

It introduces a coarse-grained model to analyze membrane effects on colloid assembly, highlighting non-monotonic and morphology-dependent influences of membrane flexibility.

Findings

Membrane stiffness non-monotonically affects core assembly promotion.

Deformable membranes can envelop cores in buds, but this is suppressed in very flexible membranes.

Clathrin-like particles form buds with morphologies dependent on membrane flexibility.

Abstract

A coarse-grained computational model is used to investigate the effect of a fluid membrane on patchy-particle assembly into biologically-relevant structures motivated by viral cores and clathrin. For cores, we demonstrate a non-monotonic dependence of the promotion of assembly on membrane stiffness. If the membrane is significantly deformable, cores are enveloped in buds, although this effect is suppressed for very flexible membranes. In the less deformable regime, we observe no marked enhancement for cores, even for strong adhesion to the surface. For clarthrin-like particles, we again observe the formation of buds, whose morphology depends on membrane-flexibility.