Fig. 4.

Curvature sensing by FAM134B-RHD. a Cut through the simulation box along the xz plane (inset top view) showing the buckled lipid bilayer (orange phosphate beads), with excess area (≈17 nm²) under edge compression. Diffusion of curvature-inducing proteins such as FAM134B-RHD (green) in the buckled membrane enables curvature sampling and estimation of intrinsic curvature preferences (see the section “Methods”). We tracked the position of proteins (x, y) along the buckle, and quantified the curvature preference (principal, mean and Gaussian; see Supplementary Fig. 15). b Histograms of mean curvature, H(x, y), sampled by FAM134B-RHD (green) in coarse-grained simulations (1 ns intervals for 20 μs) indicate a preference for highly curved regions of the buckle. By contrast, the KALP₁₅ peptide (blue) samples regions with lower curvature along the buckle. The local mean curvature field of the empty buckled membrane (red) is obtained by random sampling of points in the xy plane (see Supplementary Fig. 16)