What's Curved Membrane Builder Tool

Membrane curvature is a critical physical property of biological membranes, playing a fundamental role in regulating a variety of essential cellular processes, including endocytosis, exocytosis, vesicle formation, membrane fusion, and cytokinesis. In these processes, membrane curvature is not merely a byproduct of dynamic membrane remodeling but also a key driving force underlying membrane reshaping and associated molecular behaviors. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations represent a powerful and widely utilized computational approach for investigating the interactions between membrane curvature and membrane proteins. Curved Membrane (Cmem) Builder is a versatile tool specifically designed to construct coarse-grained (CG) MD initial configurations for lipid membranes with defined curvatures and associated protein-membrane complexes. Cmem Builder offers an intuitive user interface, advanced visualization features, and extensive customization options, enabling researchers to efficiently generate curved membrane systems through automated workflows. Figure 1 shows an application example of the Cmem Builder tool for constructing a curved membrane.
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Figure 1. Curved membrane systems constructed using Cmem Builder (a) Simulation of the BAR domain embedded in a symmetric bilayer system. (b) The Piezo1 protein embedded in a curved POPC bilayer (c) Simulation of an asymmetric plasma membrane system with distinct lipid compositions in the upper and lower leaflets.

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Centre for Artificial Intelligence Driven Drug Discovery, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Macao Polytechnic University, Macao SAR 999078, China. Email:shuli@mpu.edu.mo