Department of Mechanical, Industrial & Systems Engineering, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, United States of America.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering and Islamic Architecture, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
PLoS One. 2019 Feb 21;14(2):e0212566. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0212566. eCollection 2019.
Use of shock waves to temporarily increase the permeability of the cell membrane is a promising approach in drug delivery and gene therapy to allow the translocation of macromolecules and small polar molecules into the cytoplasm. Our understanding of how the characteristics of the pressure profile of shock waves, such as peak pressure and pulse duration, influences membrane properties is limited. Here we study the response of lipid bilayer membranes to shock pulses with different pressure profiles using atomistic molecular dynamics simulations. From our simulation results, we find that the transient deformation/disordering of the membrane depends on both the magnitude and the pulse duration of the pressure profile of the shock pulse. For a low pressure impulse, peak pressure has a dominant effect on membrane structural changes, while for the high pressure impulse, we find that there exists an optimal pulse duration at which membrane deformation/disordering is maximized.
利用冲击波暂时增加细胞膜的通透性，是一种很有前途的药物输送和基因治疗方法，可将大分子和小的极性分子转移到细胞质中。我们对冲击波的压力分布特征（如峰值压力和脉冲持续时间）如何影响膜特性的了解有限。在这里，我们使用原子分子动力学模拟研究了不同压力分布的冲击波对脂质双层膜的响应。从我们的模拟结果中，我们发现膜的瞬态变形/无序状态既取决于冲击波压力分布的幅度又取决于脉冲持续时间。对于低压力脉冲，峰值压力对膜结构变化有主导作用，而对于高压力脉冲，我们发现存在一个最佳的脉冲持续时间，在该时间内膜的变形/无序化达到最大。
