Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have devised an experiment to shed light on the mechanisms leading to cell membrane transitions. This transition is essential for several biological phenomena such as cell division, cell migration, transport of nutrients to cells and viral infection.

Changes in the shape and topology of self-assembled membranes underlie diverse processes across cell biology and engineering. The researchers examined colloidal films, which are micrometer-thick layers of aligned rod-shaped particles.

These membranes exhibit many of the same properties as cell membranes, and unlike plastic sheets in which all molecules are immobile, cell membranes are fluid sheets in which each component freely diffuses, making them a more tractable system to study. provide.

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The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says the experiment revealed three-dimensional details of the pathways through which membranes undergo topological shape changes in real time.

Colloidal membranes were made by a solution of rod-shaped viruses of two different lengths, 1.2 micrometers and 0.88 micrometers. The team studied that increasing the proportion of short rods in solution changed the shape of the colloidal film. “We mixed the two viruses in different amounts to make multiple samples and looked at them under a microscope. Student in physics and first author of the paper.

Over time, the membranes began to combine and increase in size, forming larger saddles of the same or greater order as the saddles combined laterally. The IISc said in a statement that the final configuration is a catenoid-like shape when the r fuses away from the edge at almost right angles.

The team hopes to take their research further to understand how other microscopic changes in membrane composition affect the large-scale properties of membranes.

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