Berlin 2012 – scientific programme
Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help
BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 25: Posters: Molecular Motors
BP 25.6: Poster
Thursday, March 29, 2012, 17:30–19:30, Poster A
Coarse-grained simulations of active protein machines in biological membranes with a solvent — •mu-jie huang1, raymond kapral2, alexander s. mikhailov3, and hsuan-yi chen1 — 1Department of Physics and Institute of Biophysics, National Central University, Jhongli 32001, Taiwan — 2Chemical Physics Theory Group, Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada — 3Abteilung Physikalische Chemie, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Faradayweg 4-6, 14195 Berlin, Germany.
Protein machines, cyclically changing their conformations, play a fundamental role in the living cells; many of them are found in cellular membranes. Since the cycles of the machines are in the millisecond range, approximate coarse-grained descriptions are needed. Recently, entire operation cycles of some protein machines could already be reproduced by using coarse-grained models, with solvent included. Here, we proceed further and demonstrate that dynamical cycle simulations of machines immersed into a membrane are possible. Our approach combines the elastic-network description for a machine with the multiparticle-collision modeling for the solvent and a reduced description for the lipids. Membrane-mediated synchronization of machine cycles has been found in our simulations.