Self-diffusion is temperature independent on active membranes

Abstract

Molecular transport maintains cellular structures and functions. For example, lipid and protein diffusion sculpts the dynamic shapes and structures on the cell membrane that perform essential cellular functions, such as cell signaling. Temperature variations in thermal equilibrium rapidly change molecular transport properties. The coefficient of lipid self-diffusion increases exponentially with temperature in thermal equilibrium, for example. Hence, maintaining cellular homeostasis through molecular transport is hard in thermal equilibrium in the noisy cellular environment, where temperatures can fluctuate widely due to local heat generation. In this paper, using both molecular and lattice-based modeling of membrane transport, we show that the presence of active transport originating from the cell's cytoskeleton can make the self-diffusion of the molecules on the membrane robust to temperature fluctuations. The resultant temperature-independence of self-diffusion keeps the precision of cellular signaling invariant over a broad range of ambient temperatures, allowing cells to make robust decisions. We have also found that the Kawasaki algorithm, the widely used model of lipid transport on lattices, predicts incorrect temperature dependence of lipid self-diffusion in equilibrium. We propose a new algorithm that correctly captures the equilibrium properties of lipid self-diffusion and reproduces experimental observations.