Characterization of 3D Voronoi tessellation nearest neighbor lipid shells provides atomistic lipid disruption profile of protein containing lipid membranes.

ABSTRACT: Quantifying protein-induced lipid disruptions at the atomistic level is a challenging problem in membrane biophysics. Here we propose a novel 3D Voronoi tessellation nearest-atom-neighbor shell method to classify and characterize lipid domains into discrete concentric lipid shells surrounding membrane proteins in structurally heterogeneous lipid membranes. This method needs only the coordinates of the system and is independent of force fields and simulation conditions. As a proof-of-principle, we use this multiple lipid shell method to analyze the lipid disruption profiles of three simulated membrane systems: phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylcholine/cholesterol, and beta-amyloid/phosphatidylcholine/cholesterol. We observed different atomic volume disruption mechanisms due to cholesterol an

SUBMITTER: Cheng SY 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4339443 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature