Diffusion Analyses along Mean and Gaussian-Curved Membranes with CurD

0584688 - ÚOCHB 2025 RIV US eng J - Journal Article
Fábián, Balázs - Javanainen, Matti
Diffusion Analyses along Mean and Gaussian-Curved Membranes with CurD.
Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. Roč. 15, č. 11 (2024), s. 3214-3220. ISSN 1948-7185
R&D Projects: GA ČR(CZ) GX19-26854X
Institutional support: RVO:61388963
Keywords : coarse-grained model * lipid-bilayers * curvature
Impact factor: 5.7, year: 2022
Method of publishing: Limited access
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.4c00338

Curved cellular membranes are both abundant and functionally relevant. While novel tomography approaches reveal the structural details of curved membranes, their dynamics pose an experimental challenge. Curvature especially affects the diffusion of lipids and macromolecules, yet neither experiments nor continuum models distinguish geometric effects from those caused by curvature-induced changes in membrane properties. Molecular simulations could excel here, yet despite community interest toward curved membranes, tools for their analysis are still lacking. Here, we satisfy this demand by introducing CurD, our novel and openly available implementation of the Vertex-oriented Triangle Propagation algorithm to the study of lipid diffusion along membranes with mean and/or Gaussian curvature. This approach, aided by our highly optimized implementation, computes geodetic distances significantly faster than conventional implementations of path-finding algorithms. Our tool, applied to coarse-grained simulations, allows for the first time the analysis of curvature effects on diffusion at size scales relevant to physiological processes such as endocytosis. Our analyses with different membrane geometries reveal that Gaussian curvature plays a surprisingly small role on lipid motion, whereas mean curvature, i.e., the packing of lipid headgroups largely dictates their mobility.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0352761