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Updated: Jun 15, 2026

Self-Assembly of Hybrid Lipid Membranes Doped with Hydrophobic Organic Molecules at the Water/Air Interface
Published on: May 1, 2020
Self-assembly of photosynthetic membranes
Jen Hsin1, Danielle E Chandler, James Gumbart
1Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, USA.
Abstract:
Bacterial photosynthetic membranes, also known as chromatophores, are tightly packed with integral membrane proteins that work together to carry out photosynthesis. Chromatophores display a wide range of cellular morphologies; spherical, tubular, and lamellar chromatophores have all been observed in different bacterial species, or with different protein constituents. Through recent computational modeling and simulation, it has been demonstrated that the light-harvesting complexes abundant in chromatophores induce local membrane curvature via multiple mechanisms. These protein complexes assemble to generate a global curvature and sculpt the chromatophores into various cellular-scale architectures.
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