Laboratoire Gulliver, UMR 7083 CNRS-ESPCI, Paris, France.
Phys Rev Lett. 2011 Jun 10;106(23):238101. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.238101. Epub 2011 Jun 6.
Compositional heterogeneities of cell membranes are thought to play an important role in many physiological processes. We study how variations in the membrane composition can be driven by nonthermal fluctuating forces and therefore show how these can occur relatively far from any critical point for the membrane. We show that the membrane steady state is not only controlled by the strength of the forces and how they couple to the membrane, but also by their dynamics: In a simple class of models this is captured by a single force correlation time. We conclude that the coupling of membrane composition to normal mechanical forces, such as might be exerted by polymerizing cytoskeleton filaments, could play an important role in controlling the steady state of a cell membrane that exhibits transient lateral modulations of its composition on length scales in the 10-100 nm regime.
细胞膜的组成异质性被认为在许多生理过程中发挥着重要作用。我们研究了膜组成的变化如何可以由非热波动的力驱动，因此展示了它们如何相对远离膜的任何临界点发生。我们表明，膜的稳态不仅由力的强度以及它们与膜的耦合方式控制，而且还由它们的动力学控制：在一个简单的模型类别中，这是通过单个力相关时间来捕获的。我们得出结论，将膜组成与正常机械力（例如由聚合细胞骨架丝施加的力）耦合可能在控制表现出其组成在 10-100nm 范围内的瞬态横向调制的细胞膜的稳态方面发挥重要作用。
