On the importance of hydrodynamic interactions in lipid membrane formation

Hydrodynamic interactions (HI) give rise to collective motions between molecules, which are known to be important in the dynamics of random coil polymers and colloids. However, their role in the biological self-assembly of many molecule systems has not been investigated. Here, using Brownian dynamics simulations, we evaluate the importance of HI on the kinetics of self-assembly of lipid membranes. One-thousand coarse-grained lipid molecules in periodic simulation boxes were allowed to assemble into stable bilayers in the presence and absence of intermolecular HI. Hydrodynamic interactions reduce the monomer-monomer association rate by 50%. In contrast, the rate of association of lipid clusters is much faster in the presence of intermolecular HI. In fact, with intermolecular HI, the membrane self-assembly rate is 3-10 times faster than that without intermolecular HI. We introduce an analytical model to describe the size dependence of the diffusive encounter rate of particle clusters, which can qualitatively explain our simulation results for the early stage of the membrane self-assembly process. These results clearly suggest that HI greatly affects the kinetics of self-assembly and that simulations without HI will significantly underestimate the kinetic parameters of such processes.