Protein-lipid interactions in bilayer membranes: a lattice model

A lattice model has been developed to study the effects of intrinsic membrane proteins upon the thermodynamic properties of a lipid bilayer membrane. We assume that only nearest-neighbor van der Waals and steric interactions are important and that the polar group interactions can be represented by effective pressure-area terms. Phase diagrams, the temperature T(0), which locates the gel-fluid melting, the transition enthalpy, and correlations were calculated by mean field and cluster approximations. Average lipid chain areas and chain areas when the lipid is in a given protein environment were obtained. Proteins that have a "smooth" homogeneous surface ("cholesterol-like") and those that have inhomogeneous surfaces or that bind lipids specifically were considered. We find that T(0) can vary depending upon the interactions and that another peak can appear upon the shoulder of the main peak which reflects the melting of a eutectic mixture. The transition enthalpy decreases generally, as was found before, but when a second peak appears departures from this behavior reflect aspects of the eutectic mixture. We find that proteins have significant nonzero probabilities for being adjacent to one another so that no unbroken "annulus" of lipid necessarily exists around a protein. If T(0) does not increase much, or decreases, with increasing c, then lipids adjacent to a protein cannot all be all-trans on the time scale (10(-7) sec) of our system. Around a protein the lipid correlation depth is about one lipid layer, and this increases with c. Possible consequences of ignoring changes in polar group interactions due to clustering of proteins are discussed.