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. 1995 Aug;69(2):372–379. doi: 10.1016/S0006-3495(95)79909-X

Barrier-free paths of directed protein motion in the erythrocyte plasma membrane.

D H Boal 1, S K Boey 1
PMCID: PMC1236261  PMID: 8527650

Abstract

A model is presented for the steric interaction between a plasma membrane protein and the membrane cytoskeleton in the human erythrocyte. The cytoskeleton is treated as a network of polymer chains attached to a flat bilayer, and the membrane protein is a hemisphere of effective radius R(e) with center on the bilayer edge. The simulation is used to investigate the barrier-free path L for linear guided motion of a protein in the bilayer plane. It is shown that the barrier-free paths of small proteins can be used to extract the effective in-plane diameter of cytoskeletal components. For example, the in-plane diameter of an ankyrin attachment site is found to be approximately 12 nm in the simulation, or twice the computational spectrin diameter. The barrier-free paths of large proteins (R(e) > 23 nm) vanish when the proteins are corralled by the cytoskeleton. For intermediate size proteins, L decreases approximately as L is directly proportional to S-1.4 where S is proportional to the sum of the protein and cytoskeleton chain radii.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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