Interorganelle communication and membrane shaping in the early secretory pathway.

Biomolecules in the secretory pathway use membrane trafficking for reaching their final intracellular destination or for secretion outside the cell. This highly dynamic and multipartite process involves different organelles that communicate to one another while maintaining their identity, shape, and function. Recent studies unraveled new mechanisms of interorganelle communication that help organize the early secretory pathway.

A physical mechanism of TANGO1-mediated bulky cargo export.

The endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-resident protein TANGO1 assembles into a ring around ER exit sites (ERES), and links procollagens in the ER lumen to COPII machinery, tethers, and ER-Golgi intermediate compartment (ERGIC) in the cytoplasm (Raote et al., 2018). Here, we present a theoretical approach to investigate the physical mechanisms of TANGO1 ring assembly and how COPII polymerization, membrane tension, and force facilitate the formation of a transport intermediate for procollagen export.

Channeling Effect and Tissue Morphology in a Perfusion Bioreactor Imaged by X-Ray Microtomography.

Background: Perfusion bioreactors for tissue engineering hold great promises. Indeed, the perfusion of culture medium enhances species transport and mechanically stimulates the cells, thereby increasing cell proliferation and tissue formation. Nonetheless, their development is still hampered by a lack of understanding of the relationship between mechanical cues and tissue growth.

Geometric coupling of helicoidal ramps and curvature-inducing proteins in organelle membranes.

Cellular membranes display an incredibly diverse range of shapes, both in the plasma membrane and at membrane bound organelles. These morphologies are intricately related to cellular functions, enabling and regulating fundamental membrane processes. However, the biophysical mechanisms at the origin of these complex geometries are not fully understood from the standpoint of membrane-protein coupling.

Histological Method to Study the Effect of Shear Stress on Cell Proliferation and Tissue Morphology in a Bioreactor.

Background: Tissue engineering represents a promising approach for the production of bone substitutes. The use of perfusion bioreactors for the culture of bone-forming cells on a three-dimensional porous scaffold resolves mass transport limitations and provides mechanical stimuli. Despite the recent and important development of bioreactors for tissue engineering, the underlying mechanisms leading to the production of bone substitutes remain poorly understood.

Lipid Unsaturation Properties Govern the Sensitivity of Membranes to Photoinduced Oxidative Stress.

Unsaturated lipid oxidation is a fundamental process involved in different aspects of cellular bioenergetics; dysregulation of lipid oxidation is often associated with cell aging and death. To study how lipid oxidation affects membrane biophysics, we used a chlorin photosensitizer to oxidize vesicles of various lipid compositions and degrees of unsaturation in a controlled manner. We observed different shape transitions that can be interpreted as an increase in the area of the targeted membrane followed by a decrease.

Solubilization kinetics determines the pulsatory dynamics of lipid vesicles exposed to surfactant.

We establish a biophysical model for the dynamics of lipid vesicles exposed to surfactants. The solubilization of the lipid membrane due to the insertion of surfactant molecules induces a reduction of membrane surface area at almost constant vesicle volume. This results in a rate-dependent increase of membrane tension and leads to the opening of a micron-sized pore.

Gaussian curvature directs the distribution of spontaneous curvature on bilayer membrane necks.

Formation of membrane necks is crucial for fission and fusion in lipid bilayers. In this work, we seek to answer the following fundamental question: what is the relationship between protein-induced spontaneous mean curvature and the Gaussian curvature at a membrane neck? Using an augmented Helfrich model for lipid bilayers to include membrane-protein interaction, we solve the shape equation on catenoids to find the field of spontaneous curvature that satisfies mechanical equilibrium of membrane necks. In this case, the shape equation reduces to a variable coefficient Helmholtz equation for spontaneous curvature, where the source term is proportional to the Gaussian curvature.

Pulsatile Gating of Giant Vesicles Containing Macromolecular Crowding Agents Induced by Colligative Nonideality.

The ability of large macromolecules to exhibit nontrivial deviations in colligative properties of their aqueous solutions is well-appreciated in polymer physics. Here, we show that this colligative nonideality subjects giant lipid vesicles containing inert macromolecular crowding agents to osmotic pressure differentials when bathed in small-molecule osmolytes at comparable concentrations. The ensuing influx of water across the semipermeable membrane induces characteristic swell-burst cycles: here, cyclical and damped oscillations in size, tension, and membrane phase separation occur en route to equilibration.

Systems biology of cellular membranes: a convergence with biophysics.

Systems biology and systems medicine have played an important role in the last two decades in shaping our understanding of biological processes. While systems biology is synonymous with network maps and '-omics' approaches, it is not often associated with mechanical processes. Here, we make the case for considering the mechanical and geometrical aspects of biological membranes as a key step in pushing the frontiers of systems biology of cellular membranes forward.

Pulsatile Lipid Vesicles under Osmotic Stress.

The response of lipid bilayers to osmotic stress is an important part of cellular function. Recent experimental studies showed that when cell-sized giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) are exposed to hypotonic media, they respond to the osmotic assault by undergoing a cyclical sequence of swelling and bursting events, coupled to the membrane's compositional degrees of freedom. Here, we establish a fundamental and quantitative understanding of the essential pulsatile behavior of GUVs under hypotonic conditions by advancing a comprehensive theoretical model of vesicle dynamics.

Averaged model for momentum and dispersion in hierarchical porous media.

Hierarchical porous media are multiscale systems, where different characteristic pore sizes and structures are encountered at each scale. Focusing the analysis to three pore scales, an upscaling procedure based on the volume-averaging method is applied twice, in order to obtain a macroscopic model for momentum and diffusion-dispersion. The effective transport properties at the macroscopic scale (permeability and dispersion tensors) are found to be explicitly dependent on the mesoscopic ones.