AI-guided transition path sampling of lipid flip-flop and membrane nanoporation

Abstract: We study lipid translocation ("flip-flop") between the leaflets of a planar lipid bilayer with transition path sampling (TPS). Rare flip-flops compete with biological machineries that actively establish asymmetric lipid compositions. AI guided TPS captures flip-flop without biasing the dynamics by initializing molecular dynamics simulations close to the tipping point, i.e., where it is equally likely for a lipid to next go to one or the other leaflet. We train a neural network model on the fly to predict the respective probability, i.e., the "committor" encoding the mechanism of flip-flop. Whereas coarse-grained DMPC lipids "tunnel" through the hydrophobic bilayer, unaided by water, atomistic DMPC lipids instead utilize spontaneously formed water nanopores to traverse to the other side. For longer DSPC lipids, these membrane defects are less stable, with lipid transfer along transient water threads in a locally thinned membrane emerging as a third distinct mechanism. Remarkably, in the high (~660) dimensional feature space of the deep neural networks, the reaction coordinate becomes effectively linear, in line with Cover's theorem and consistent with the idea of dominant reaction tubes.