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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
The animal cell plasma membrane is a complex mixture of hundreds of lipids, cholesterol, and membrane proteins, all anchored to the cortical actin cytoskeleton. For several decades, simple mixtures of phospholipids and cholesterol have been used as models for the plasma membrane, but may not capture key aspects of membrane organization. In this talk, I will present simulations of several lipid mixtures obtained on the Anton special-purpose supercomputer. The mixtures include both "canonical" ternary mixtures like DPPC/DOPC/Chol and more complex mixtures designed as "minimal membrane models" on the basis of lipidomic data. Standard measures of membrane structure and dynamics will be compared across such mixtures, in order to determine to what extent simple mixtures mimic more complex membranes. I will also present a new approach based on the maximum entropy formalism to compare lipid mixtures, and determine to what extent they are nonnideal, and to identify preferential lipid interactions from simulation data.
Host: Angel Garcia