Wrinkling of a spherical lipid interface induced by actomyosin cortex

Abstract

Actomyosin actively generates contractile forces that provide the plasma membrane with the deformation stresses essential to carry out biological processes. Although the contractile property of purified actomyosin has been extensively studied, to understand the physical contribution of the actiomyosin contractile force on a deformable membrane is still a challenging problem and of great interest in the field of biophysics. Here, we reconstituted a model system with a cell-sized deformable interface that exhibits anomalous curvature dependent wrinkling caused by actomyosin cortex underneath the spherical closed interface. Through the shape analysis of the wrinkling deformation, we found that the dominant contributor on the wrinkled shape changes from bending elasticity to stretching elasticity of the reconstituted cortex by increasing the droplet curvature radius of the order of the cell-size, i.e., tens of micrometer. The observed curvature dependence was explained by the theoretical description of the cortex elasticity and contractility. Our present results provide a fundamental insight on the deformation of a curved membrane induced by the actomyosin cortex.