Figure 2.

Schematic of membrane-inserted receptors. (a) Trimer (orange shaded area) of dimers (red bars) with geometric parameters. C_T is the intrinsic curvature of a trimer. (b) Cluster of three trimers at the cell pole. Trimer-trimer coupling strength J₀ is indicated by green arrows. Also shown are the cell wall and the inner membrane (gray) with curvature C_m,p. The height profile h(r) describes the cluster-membrane deformation as measured relative to the preferred height due to cell wall and turgor pressure. (c) Same cluster at a lateral position with membrane curvature C_m,l. Red arrows indicate energetically unfavorable membrane deformations due to the cluster-membrane curvature mismatch.