Effect of Receptor Structure and Length on the Wrapping of a Nanoparticle by a Lipid Membrane

Nanoparticles have been considered as a type of powerful tool to deliver drugs and genes into cells for disease diagnosis and therapies. It has been generally accepted that the internalization of nanoparticles into cells is mostly realized by receptor-mediated endocytosis. However, for the influence of structural factors of receptors on endocytosis, this is still largely unknown. In this paper, computer simulations are applied to investigate the effects of structure (i.e., the number of constituent chains of the receptor) and the length of the receptor on the wrapping behavior of nanoparticles by the lipid membrane, which is a key step of receptor-medicated endocytosis. It is found that these structural factors of receptors have strong effects on the nanoparticle’s final interaction configuration with the membrane in the simulations, such as adhering on the membrane surface or being partly or fully wrapped by the membrane. Furthermore, in some cases, the rupture of the lipid membrane occurs. These results are helpful for the understanding of endocytosis and the preparation of advanced nanoscale drug-delivery vectors.