Cooperative Gating and Spatial Organization of Membrane Proteins through Elastic Interactions
Figure 5
Average Separation between Proteins Drops Significantly due to Elastic Interactions
The average separation between two diffusing MscL proteins in a box of area A is plotted as a function of tension for a range of areal densities, each shown as a different line color. The grey region roughly indicates when gating is occurring. At low areal density (mostly blue), the conformational change does not draw the proteins significantly closer together. As the areal density increases, the conformational change is able to draw the proteins up to ∼100 times closer than they would otherwise be. At the highest areal density (mostly red), the steric constraint of available area intrinsically positions the proteins close to one another regardless of their conformation. The average separation begins to increase again as higher tension weakens the open–open interaction.