부산대학교 도서관

Lateral heterogeneities in biomembranes are physiologically important for various cellular functions. While the nature of structural heterogeneities is well studied, their molecular origin remains ambiguous. In this chapter, we discuss our recent investigations on lateral heterogeneity in model membranes with coexisting fluid phases. Using ideas from physics of amorphous material and glasses, we employ nonaffine deformation–based numerical characterization to distinguish between the liquid-ordered (Lo) and liquid-disordered (Ld) regions in model lipid bilayers. We are able to identify some nontrivial connections between the lipid-level topological rearrangements and the hydrophobic defects distributions in phase-separated membranes. The method provides a new framework to explore the molecular origin of spatial heterogeneity in biomembranes. The lipid-level deformation data, along with the nature of defects dynamics and their localization at the Lo–Ld interface, provide molecular-level insights into preferential binding of certain peptides at domain boundaries.