Which Coverages of Arc-Shaped Proteins Are Required for Membrane Tubulation?

Arc-shaped BIN/Amphiphysin/Rvs (BAR) domain proteins generate curvature by binding to membranes and induce membrane tubulation at sufficiently large protein coverages. For the amphiphysin N-BAR domain, Le Roux et al., , , 6550, measured a threshold coverage of 0.44 ± 0.097 for nanotubules emerging from the supported lipid bilayer. In this article, we systematically investigate membrane tubulation induced by arc-shaped protein-like particles with coarse-grained modeling and simulations and determine the threshold coverages at different particle-particle interaction strengths and membrane spontaneous curvatures. In our simulations, the binding of arc-shaped particles induces a membrane shape transition from spherical vesicles to tubules at a particle threshold coverage of about 0.5, which is rather robust to variations of the direct attractive particle interactions or spontaneous membrane curvature in the coarse-grained model. Our study suggests that threshold coverages of around or slightly below 0.5 are a general requirement for membrane tubulation by arc-shaped BAR domain proteins.