Formation and Interaction of Membrane Tubes

作者：Imre Derényi, Frank Jülicher, Jacques Prost · 发表于：Physical Review Letters · 年份：2002 · DOI：10.1103/physrevlett.88.238101 · 被引用次数：513 · 研究领域：Lipid Membrane Structure and Behavior、Cellular transport and secretion、Microtubule and mitosis dynamics

We show that the formation of membrane tubes (or membrane tethers), which is a crucial step in many biological processes, is highly nontrivial and involves first-order shape transitions. The force exerted by an emerging tube is a nonmonotonic function of its length. We point out that tubes attract each other, which eventually leads to their coalescence. We also show that detached tubes behave like semiflexible filaments with a rather short persistence length. We suggest that these properties play an important role in the formation and structure of tubular organelles.