Membrane-Mediated Interactions Between Nonspherical Elastic Particles.

ACS Nano

Theoretical Physics of Living Matter, Institute for Biological Information Processing and Institute for Advanced Simulation, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany.

Published: February 2023

The transport of particles across lipid-bilayer membranes is important for biological cells to exchange information and material with their environment. Large particles often get wrapped by membranes, a process which has been intensively investigated in the case of hard particles. However, many particles in vivo and in vitro are deformable, e.g., vesicles, filamentous viruses, macromolecular condensates, polymer-grafted nanoparticles, and microgels. Vesicles may serve as a generic model system for deformable particles. Here, we study nonspherical vesicles with various sizes, shapes, and elastic properties at initially planar lipid-bilayer membranes. Using the Helfrich Hamiltonian, triangulated membranes, and energy minimization, we predict the interplay of vesicle shapes and wrapping states. Increasing particle softness enhances the stability of shallow-wrapped and deep-wrapped states over nonwrapped and complete-wrapped states. The free membrane mediates an interaction between partial-wrapped vesicles. For the pair interaction between deep-wrapped vesicles, we predict repulsion. For shallow-wrapped vesicles, we predict attraction for tip-to-tip orientation and repulsion for side-by-side orientation. Our predictions may guide the design and fabrication of deformable particles for efficient use in medical applications, such as targeted drug delivery.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9933614PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.2c05801DOI Listing

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