1. Lateral dynamics of charged lipids and peripheral proteins in spatially heterogeneous membranes: Comparison of continuous and Monte Carlo approaches.
- Author
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Kiselev, Vladimir Yu., Leda, Marcin, Lobanov, Alexey I., Marenduzzo, Davide, and Goryachev, Andrew B.
- Subjects
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LIPIDS , *PROTEINS , *BIOLOGICAL membranes , *MONTE Carlo method , *ELECTROSTATICS , *NUMERICAL analysis , *POISSON'S equation , *APPROXIMATION theory , *SIMULATION methods & models - Abstract
Biological membranes are complex environments whose physico-chemical properties are of utmost importance for the understanding of many crucial biological processes. Much attention has been given in the literature to the description of membranes along the z-axis perpendicular to the membrane. Here, we instead consider the lateral dynamics of lipids and peripheral proteins due to their electrostatic interaction. Previously, we constructed a Monte Carlo automaton capable of simulating mutual diffusive dynamics of charged lipids and associated positively charged peptides. Here, we derive and numerically analyze a system of Poisson-Boltzmann-Nernst-Planck (PBNP) equations that provide a mean-field approximation compatible with our Monte Carlo model. The thorough comparison between the mean-field PBNP equations and Monte Carlo simulations demonstrates that both the approaches are in a good qualitative agreement in all tested scenarios. We find that the two methods quantitatively deviate when the local charge density is high, presumably because the Poisson-Boltzmann formalism is applicable in the so-called weak coupling limit, whose validity is restricted to low charge densities. Nevertheless, we conclude that the mean-field PBNP approach provides a good approximation for the considerably more detailed Monte Carlo model at only a fraction of the associated computational cost and allows simulation of the membrane lateral dynamics on the space and time scales relevant for the realistic biological problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2011
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