Multicomponent membranes with active recycling: compositional inhomogeneities and morphology
Abstract
Organelle membranes are multicomponent fluid sheets that undergo recycling through
fission and fusion processes. The impact of this recycling process on the morphology and
local composition is still not very well understood. Here, we use a method recently
developed by us, using dynamically triangulated surface model, to mimic the membrane
activity. Here we report our results from the simulations of a three-component vesicle
composed of 1) active species which can have non-zero spontaneous curvature and
participate in recycling and 2) inactive species which do not participate in recycling.
These active species are of two types and induce curvature of opposite sign when
attached to the membrane. We investigate the steady state morphologies as a function of
activity rate, spontaneous curvature and the strength of interaction between species. We
find an intriguing strong dependence of morphology on the preferred curvature of the
species undergoing recycling.