Formation and Interaction of Membrane Tubes

TL;DR

This paper investigates the complex formation and interactions of membrane tubes, revealing non-trivial shape transitions, non-monotonic forces, tube attraction, and filament-like behavior, which are crucial for understanding tubular organelles.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the physical properties and interactions of membrane tubes, highlighting their role in biological processes and organelle structure.

Findings

Force exerted by tubes is non-monotonic with length

Tubes attract each other leading to coalescence

Detached tubes behave like semiflexible filaments

Abstract

We show that the formation of membrane tubes (or membrane tethers), which is a crucial step in many biological processes, is highly non-trivial and involves first order shape transitions. The force exerted by an emerging tube is a non-monotonic function of its length. We point out that tubes attract each other, which eventually leads to their coalescence. We also show that detached tubes behave like semiflexible filaments with a rather short persistence length. We suggest that these properties play an important role in the formation and structure of tubular organelles.