Continuum electromechanical modeling of protein-membrane interactions

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2010 Oct;82(4 Pt 1):041923. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.82.041923. Epub 2010 Oct 28.

Abstract

A continuum electromechanical model is proposed to describe the membrane curvature induced by electrostatic interactions in a solvated protein-membrane system. The model couples the macroscopic strain energy of membrane and the electrostatic solvation energy of the system, and equilibrium membrane deformation is obtained by minimizing the electroelastic energy functional with respect to the dielectric interface. The model is illustrated with the systems with increasing geometry complexity and captures the sensitivity of membrane curvature to the permanent and mobile charge distributions.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Cell Membrane / metabolism*
  • Electricity*
  • Mechanical Phenomena*
  • Membrane Proteins / chemistry
  • Membrane Proteins / metabolism*
  • Models, Biological*
  • Molecular Dynamics Simulation
  • Nonlinear Dynamics
  • Protein Binding
  • Protein Structure, Tertiary
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Solvents / chemistry
  • Static Electricity

Substances

  • Membrane Proteins
  • Solvents