Origin of the nonlinear structural and mechanical properties in oppositely curved lipid mixtures

Shivam Gupta; Jatin Soni; Awneesh Kumar; Taraknath Mandal

doi:10.1063/5.0167144

Origin of the nonlinear structural and mechanical properties in oppositely curved lipid mixtures

J Chem Phys. 2023 Oct 28;159(16):165102. doi: 10.1063/5.0167144.

Authors

Shivam Gupta¹, Jatin Soni¹, Awneesh Kumar¹, Taraknath Mandal¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur 208016, India.

PMID: 37873964
DOI: 10.1063/5.0167144

Abstract

Structural and mechanical properties of membranes such as thickness, tail order, bending modulus and curvature energetics play crucial role in controlling various cellular functions that depend on the local lipid organization and membrane reshaping. While behavior of these biophysical properties are well understood in single component membranes, very little is known about how do they change in the mixed lipid membranes. Often various properties of the mixed lipid bilayers are assumed to change linearly with the mole fractions of the constituent lipids which, however, is true for "ideal" mixing only. In this study, using molecular dynamics simulations, we show that structural and mechanical properties of binary lipid mixture change nonlinearly with the lipid mole fractions, and the strength of the nonlinearity depends on two factors - spontaneous curvature difference and locally inhomogeneous interactions between the lipid components.