Regensburg 2022 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 12: Poster 2

BP 12.53: Poster

Dienstag, 6. September 2022, 17:30–19:30, P4

Simulation of Double-Walled Vesicles Surrounded by Mixed Membranes — •Paul Louis Sonek and Friederike Schmid — Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, Germany

The simulation of membranes from cells and organelles has been a subject of research for quite some time. Some organelles, like the mitochondria, are surrounded by two membranes, where the area of the inner one is much larger than that of the outer one. Such organelles are characterized by numerous invaginations in the inner membrane. The goal of our work is to investigate to which extent simple membrane models can reproduce such structures.

We use the triangulated surface model of Noguchi and Gompper [1] to model double-walled vesicles and combine it with a field model on the model's surface to simulate a membrane with different lipid compositions on different parts of the membrane. Depending on the volume and surface of the inner membrane, we obtain different stable and metastable shapes for the resulting invagination, including flat invaginations, which have a shape similar to the ones observed in mitochondria. Furthermore, configurations with more than one of such folds are found to be metastable.

Our results may shed light on the mechanisms responsible for the peculiar membrane shapes observed in organelles.

[1] H. Noguchi, G. Gompper, Phys. Rev. E 72, 011901 (2005).