Lateral pressure profile in lipid membranes with finite curvature and mechanosensitive channel gating

Abstract: This review describes the analytical calculation of lateral pressure profile in lipid membrane with finite curvature. The derivation is based on the previously developed microscopic model of flexible strings [1,2]. According to this theory the energy per unit chain is considered as energy of flexible string (Euler's elastic beam of finite thickness) and interaction between chains is considered as an entropic repulsion. This microscopic theory allows to obtain expression for lateral pressure distribution in bent lipid membrane if treating a bending as a small deviation from the flat membrane conformation and using perturbation theory with small parameter L0J, where L0 is the monolayer thickness, J is mean curvature of membrane. Because lateral pressure distribution is related to the elastic properties of lipid bilayer [3] then first spontaneous moment of lateral pressure and the expression for bending modulus may be derived from this theoretical model. Finally, based on analytical expression for the lateral pressure distribution in bent lipid membrane one can obtain analytically the energy difference between two states of mechanosensitive channel, particularly MscL [4, 5, 6]. Calculated expression depends on inter-facial surface tension, the channel area change in region between hydrophobic interior and the aqueous surroundings and the bending modulus and spontaneous bending moment values.