A Dynamic and Mechanical Membrane Model to Study Membrane Remodeling Kinetics

Remodeling membranes requires an induced curvature change, which is essential in multiple cellular processes including fission and fusion, exo- and endocytosis, and matrix formation in mitochondria. Most membranes prefer to be flat and bending of the membrane is thus energetically unfavorable. Therefore, a wide range of proteins facilitates curvature inducing of cellular membranes. However, the coupled kinetics of protein assembly and membrane dynamics are too fast to resolve experimentally; current models have investigated membrane remodeling dynamics in the presence of proteins, but not coupled with explicit proteins obeying reaction and diffusion dynamics. In this research, we bridge the gap between protein and membrane dynamic models with a mechanical membrane model that integrates reaction-diffusion dynamics to investigate the mechanisms of protein driven membrane remodeling. We start off with a static mechanical membrane with the limit surface method to introduce dynamics according to brownian motion, which is validated against expected membrane fluctuations. We implement flat and spherical membrane models with different boundary conditions and couple membrane dynamics with reaction-diffusion models of single membrane binding proteins. This dynamic and mechanical membrane model will ultimately provide an open source resource to the community for detailed understanding of membrane remodeling in cell biology.