Kim K S, Neu J, Oster G
Department of Physics, Graduate Group in Theoretical Biophysics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
Biophys J. 1998 Nov;75(5):2274-91. doi: 10.1016/S0006-3495(98)77672-6.
Membrane proteins can deform the lipid bilayer in which they are embedded. If the bilayer is treated as an elastic medium, then these deformations will generate elastic interactions between the proteins. The interaction between a single pair is repulsive. However, for three or more proteins, we show that there are nonpairwise forces whose magnitude is similar to the pairwise forces. When there are five or more proteins, we show that the nonpairwise forces permit the existence of stable protein aggregates, despite their pairwise repulsions.
膜蛋白能够使其所嵌入的脂质双层发生变形。如果将脂质双层视为一种弹性介质，那么这些变形将会在蛋白之间产生弹性相互作用。单个蛋白对之间的相互作用是排斥性的。然而，对于三个或更多的蛋白，我们发现存在大小与成对作用力相近的非成对作用力。当存在五个或更多蛋白时，我们发现尽管它们之间存在成对排斥力，但非成对作用力使得稳定的蛋白聚集体得以存在。
