Membrane Crowding and Complexity: Interplay between Protein-Lipid Interactions, Clustering and Diffusion

It is well-understood that cell membranes are crowded and complex environments, containing up to 50% protein by mass and comprised of myriad types of lipid species. Less well understood is the molecular detail of the effects of complexity and crowding on membrane organisation and dynamics. Advances in coarse-grained force fields and computational power mean that large-scale coarse-grained (CG) molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are increasingly being used to gain such understanding.