Osmotic Concentration-Controlled Particle Uptake and Wrapping-Induced Lysis of Cells and Vesicles

In vivo, high protein and ion concentrations determine the preferred volumes of cells, organelles, and vesicles. Deformations of their lipid-bilayer membranes by nanoparticle wrapping reduce the interior volumes available to solutes and thus induce large osmotic pressure differences. Osmotic concentration can therefore be an important control parameter for wrapping of nanoparticles. We employ a curvature-elasticity model of the membrane and contact interaction with spherical particles to study their wrapping at initially spherical vesicles. Although the continuous particle-binding transition is independent of the presence of solutes, the discontinuous envelopment transition shifts to higher adhesion strengths and the corresponding energy barrier increases with increasing osmotic concentration. High osmotic concentrations stabilize partial-wrapped, membrane-bound states for both, particle attachment to the inside and the outside. In this regime, wrapping of particles controls membrane tension, with power-law dependencies on osmotic concentration and adhesion strength. For high adhesion strengths, particle wrapping can lead to the opening of mechanosensitive channels in cell membranes and to lysis. Membrane tension-induced stabilization of partial-wrapped states as well as wrapping-induced lysis play important roles not only for desired mechano-bacteriocidal effects of engineered nanomaterials but may also determine viral burst sizes of bacteria and control endocytosis for mammalian cells.