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Biophys J, March 2001, p. 1075-1087, Vol. 80, No. 3

Statistical Thermodynamics of Membrane Bending-Mediated Protein-Protein Attractions

Tom Chou,* Ken S. Kim,dagger and George OsterDagger

 *Department of Biomathematics, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA,  dagger Departments of Physiology and Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 9EW, United Kingdom, and  Dagger Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA

Highly wedge-shaped integral membrane proteins, or membrane-adsorbed proteins can induce long-ranged deformations. The strain in the surrounding bilayer creates relatively long-ranged forces that contribute to interactions with nearby proteins. In contrast, to direct short-ranged interactions such as van der Waal's, hydrophobic, or electrostatic interactions, both local membrane Gaussian curvature and protein ellipticity can induce forces acting at distances of up to a few times their typical radii. These forces can be attractive or repulsive, depending on the proteins' shape, height, contact angle with the bilayer, and a pre-existing local membrane curvature. Although interaction energies are not pairwise additive, for sufficiently low protein density, thermodynamic properties depend only upon pair interactions. Here, we compute pair interaction potentials and entropic contributions to the two-dimensional osmotic pressure of a collection of noncircular proteins. For flat membranes, bending rigidities of ~100kBT, moderate ellipticities, and large contact angle proteins, we find thermally averaged attractive interactions of order kBT. These interactions may play an important role in the intermediate stages of protein aggregation. Numerous biological processes where membrane bending-mediated interactions may be relevant are cited, and possible experiments are discussed.

Biophys J, March 2001, p. 1075-1087, Vol. 80, No. 3
© 2001 by the Biophysical Society   0006-3495/01/03/1075/13  $2.00


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