Receptor-Mediated Endocytosis of Nanoparticles: Roles of Shapes, Orientations, and Rotations of Nanoparticles

A complete understanding of the interactions between nanoparticles (NPs) and the cell membrane is essential for the potential biomedical applications of NPs. The rotation of the NP during the cellular wrapping process is of great biological significance and has been widely observed in experiments and simulations. However, the underlying mechanisms of the rotation and their potential influences on the wrapping behavior are far from being fully understood. Here, by coupling the rotation of the NP with the diffusion of the receptors, we set up a model to theoretically investigate the wrapping pathway and the internalization rate of the rotatable NP in the receptor-mediated endocytosis. Based on this model, it is found that the endocytosis proceeds through the symmetric-asymmetric or asymmetric-symmetric-asymmetric wrapping pathway due to the bending and membrane tension competition induced rotation of NP. In addition, we show that the wrapping rate in the direction that the wrapping proceeds can be largely accelerated by the rotation. Moreover, the time to fully wrap the NP depends not only on the size and shape of the NP but also on its rotation and initial orientation. These results reveal the roles of the shape, rotation, and initial orientation of the NP on the receptor-mediated endocytosis and may provide guidelines for the design of NP-based drug delivery systems.

Lateral Diffusion of a Submicrometer Particle on a Lipid Bilayer Membrane

In past decades, nanoparticles and nanomaterials have been actively used for applications such as visualizing nano/submicrometer cell structure, killing cancer cells, and using drug delivery systems. It is important to understand the physicochemical mechanisms that govern the motion of nanoparticles on a plasma membrane surface. However, the motion of small particles of <1000 nm on lipid membranes is poorly understood. In this study, we investigated the diffusion of particles with a diameter of 200-800 nm on a lipid membrane using cell-sized liposomes. Particle-associated liposomes were obtained by applying centrifugal force to a mixture of liposomes and particle solutions. We measured the thermal motion of the particles by phase-contrast microscopy. We found that (i) the particle-size dependence of the diffusion of particles adhering to membranes was better described by the DADL model rather than the Einstein-Stokes model, (ii) the diffusion coefficient of a particle strongly depends on the adsorption state of the particle, such as fully or partially wrapped by the membrane, and (iii) anomalous diffusion was induced by the localization of particles on the neck of budded vesicles.

Wrapping of nanoparticles by the cell membrane: the role of interactions between the nanoparticles

A fundamental understanding of the interactions between nanoparticles (NPs) and the cell membrane is essential to improve the performance of the NP-based biomedical applications and assess the potential toxicity of NPs. Despite the great progress in understanding the interaction between individual NP and the membrane, little is known about the interaction between multiple NPs and the membrane. In this work, we investigate the wrapping of two parallel elongated NPs by the membrane, taking the NP-NP electrostatic interaction and van der Waals (vdW) interaction into consideration. Three types of NPs, namely the rigid NPs with circular and elliptic cross-sections and the deformable NPs, are systematically investigated. The results show that the electrostatic interaction would enhance the tendency of the independent wrapping and inhibit the rotation of the elongated and equally charged NPs with elliptic cross-sections. Under the vdW interaction, the competition of the NP-NP adhesion and the membrane elastic energies with the NP-membrane adhesion energy leads the NPs to be wrapped cooperatively or independently. For the system with elongated NPs with elliptic cross-sections, the NPs are more likely to be wrapped independently as the shapes become more anisotropic and the NPs would rotate to contact each other with the flat sides in the cooperative wrapping configuration. Moreover, the soft NPs are more likely to be wrapped cooperatively compared with the stiff NPs. These results may provide guidelines to control the internalization pathway of NPs and improve the efficiency of NP-based drug delivery systems.