Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Mechanisms of Membrane-bending

Mechanisms of Membrane-bending

The living membranes are flexible due to their fluid mosaic nature; however, their bending into different shapes is an active process regulated by specific lipids and proteins. The membrane bending can be transient as seen in vesicles or stable for a long time as in microvilli. Cells regulate the size, location, and duration of the membrane curvature.
Membrane bending can happen due to intrinsic changes in lipid composition or extrinsic association with different proteins. The proteins involved...

Cell Motility through Blebbing

Cell Motility through Blebbing

Blebs are a type of membrane protrusion formed by the internal hydrostatic pressure of the cytoplasm. Blebs are observed in several cell types, including fibroblasts, immune cells, and single-celled organisms like the amoeba. The primary function of blebs is cell locomotion and apoptosis, but they are also found during necrosis and cell division. The life cycle of a bleb comprises an initiation phase followed by the expansion and retraction phases.
Blebbing Through the Matrix
In multicellular...

Vesicular Tubular Clusters

Vesicular Tubular Clusters

After budding out from the ER membrane, some COPII vesicles lose their coat and fuse with one another to form larger vesicles and interconnected tubules called vesicular tubular clusters or VTCs. These clusters constitute a compartment at the ER-Golgi interface known as ERGIC (Endoplasmic Reticulum Golgi Intermediate Compartment). The ERGIC is a mobile membrane-bound cargo transport system that sorts proteins secreted from ER and delivers them to the Golgi.
With the help of motor proteins such...

Mechanisms of Membrane Domain Formation

Mechanisms of Membrane Domain Formation

Different physical properties of lipids and proteins allow them to localize and form distinct islands or domains in the membrane. Some membrane domains are formed due to protein-protein interactions, whereas others are formed due to the presence of specific lipids such as sphingolipids and sterols—for example, large proteins, such as bacteriorhodopsin, aggregate and create distinct domains.
Another mechanism for membrane domain formation involves membrane proteins interacting with...

Assembly of the Lipid Bilayer in the ER

Assembly of the Lipid Bilayer in the ER

Biological membranes are more than just a barrier separating cell cytoplasm from the outside environment. They are highly dynamic and help maintain the integrity and physiological stability of the cells as well as membrane-bound organelles. Membranes also play vital roles in cell-to-cell and intracellular communication.
A large chunk of any biological membrane is composed of phospholipids. These lipids have a heterogeneous distribution across different subcellular organelles and even between...

Pinching-off of Coated Vesicles

Pinching-off of Coated Vesicles

Vesicle budding is orchestrated by distinct cytosolic proteins such as adaptor proteins, coat proteins, and GTPases. To initiate vesicle budding, membrane-bending proteins containing crescent-shaped BAR domains bind to the lipid heads in the bilayer and distort the membrane to form a protein-coated vesicle bud. Adaptors proteins such as AP2 for clathrin-coated vesicles can nucleate on the deformed membrane. Finally, coat proteins such as clathrin or COPI and COPII assemble into a coat forming...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Stress-boundary-memory feedback drives vortical-polar transitions in softly confined active matter.

Soft matter·2026

Same author

Force patterning drives quasistratification and graded tissue-scale spatial order in auditory epithelia.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·2026

Same author

Excitability and traveling waves in renewable active matter.

Physical review. E·2025

Same author

Segregation, finite-time elastic singularities, and coarsening in renewable active matter.

Physical review. E·2025

Same author

Rotational dynamics of bound pairs of bacteria-induced membrane tubes.

Soft matter·2025

Same author

Dynamical properties of chromatin provide insights into key folding principles.

Biophysical journal·2025

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Apr 17, 2026

A Model Membrane Platform for Reconstituting Mitochondrial Membrane Dynamics

A Model Membrane Platform for Reconstituting Mitochondrial Membrane Dynamics

Published on: September 2, 2020

Organelle morphogenesis by active membrane remodeling.

N Ramakrishnan¹, John H Ipsen, Madan Rao

¹Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, India. sunil@physics.iitm.ac.in.

|February 13, 2015

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Active membrane fission and fusion, driven by GTPases, shape organelles. Simulations reveal these energy-consuming processes generate complex, ramified organelle morphologies in vivo, highlighting nonequilibrium dynamics in morphogenesis.

More Related Videos

Membrane Remodeling of Giant Vesicles in Response to Localized Calcium Ion Gradients

Membrane Remodeling of Giant Vesicles in Response to Localized Calcium Ion Gradients

Published on: July 16, 2018

Spontaneous Formation and Rearrangement of Artificial Lipid Nanotube Networks as a Bottom-Up Model for Endoplasmic Reticulum

Spontaneous Formation and Rearrangement of Artificial Lipid Nanotube Networks as a Bottom-Up Model for Endoplasmic Reticulum

Published on: January 22, 2019

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Apr 17, 2026

A Model Membrane Platform for Reconstituting Mitochondrial Membrane Dynamics

A Model Membrane Platform for Reconstituting Mitochondrial Membrane Dynamics

Published on: September 2, 2020

Membrane Remodeling of Giant Vesicles in Response to Localized Calcium Ion Gradients

Membrane Remodeling of Giant Vesicles in Response to Localized Calcium Ion Gradients

Published on: July 16, 2018

Spontaneous Formation and Rearrangement of Artificial Lipid Nanotube Networks as a Bottom-Up Model for Endoplasmic Reticulum

Spontaneous Formation and Rearrangement of Artificial Lipid Nanotube Networks as a Bottom-Up Model for Endoplasmic Reticulum

Published on: January 22, 2019

Area of Science:

Cell Biology
Biophysics
Computational Biology

Background:

Intracellular organelles undergo constant lipid and protein transport.
Active membrane fission and fusion, regulated by GTPases like Arf-Coatamer and Rab-Snare complexes, are crucial for organelle dynamics.
These processes involve sensing and generating membrane curvature.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the role of active fission and fusion processes in determining organelle morphology and composition segregation.
To understand how nonequilibrium dynamics influence the shapes of closed membranes.

Main Methods:

Dynamical Triangulation Monte Carlo simulations were employed.
The simulations modeled active, energy-consuming transport processes involving fission and fusion.

Main Results:

Simulations demonstrated that active processes lead to specific steady-state shapes for closed membranes.
The resulting morphologies closely resemble the ramified structures of organelles observed in living cells.

Conclusions:

Nonequilibrium fission-fusion dynamics are critical for organelle morphogenesis.
Active membrane remodeling significantly contributes to the characteristic shapes of intracellular organelles.