The drag of a filament moving in a supported spherical bilayer

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical framework using slender-body theory to calculate the drag on filamentous proteins in supported bilayer membranes, considering membrane properties and fluid interactions, with implications for understanding protein dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive model for filament drag in supported bilayers, accounting for membrane rheology and inter-leaflet friction, extending previous simpler models.

Findings

Drag grows linearly with filament length along the parallel direction.

Drag scales quadratically with filament length in perpendicular and rotational motions.

Differences between supported and free bilayer membranes are qualitatively discussed.

Abstract

Many of the cell membrane vital functions are achieved by the self-organization of the proteins and biopolymers embedded in it. The protein dynamics are in part determined by its drag. A large number of these proteins can polymerize to form filaments. In-vitro studies of protein-membrane interactions often involve using rigid beads coated with lipid bilayers, as a model for the cell membrane. Motivated by this, we use slender-body theory to compute the translational and rotational resistance of a single filamentous protein embedded in the outer layer of a supported bilayer membrane and surrounded on the exterior by a Newtonian fluid. We first consider the regime, where the two layers are strongly coupled through their inter-leaflet friction. We find that the drag along the parallel direction grows linearly with the filament length and quadratically with the length for perpendicular and the rotational drag coefficients. These findings are explained using scaling arguments and by analyzing the velocity fields around the moving filament. We, then, present and discuss the qualitative differences between the drag of a filament moving in a freely suspended bilayer and a supported membrane as a function of the membrane inter-leaflet friction. Finally, we briefly discuss how these findings can be used in experiments to determine membrane rheology. In summary, we present a formulation that allows computing the effects of membrane properties (its curvature, viscosity, and inter-leaflet friction), and the exterior and interior 3D fluids depth and viscosity on the drag of a rod-like or filamentous protein, all in a unified theoretical framework.