Lateral diffusion and percolation in membranes.

An algorithm based on Voronoi tessellation and percolation theory is presented to study the diffusion of model membrane components (solutes) in the plasma membrane. The membrane is modeled as a two-dimensional space with integral membrane proteins as static obstacles. The Voronoi diagram consists of vertices, which are equidistant from three matrix obstacles, joined by edges. An edge between two vertices is said to be connected if solute particles can pass directly between the two regions. The percolation threshold, pc, determined using this passage criterion is pc approximately equal to 0.53. This is smaller than if the connectivity of edges were assigned randomly, in which case the percolation threshold pr=2/3, where p is the fraction of connected edges. Molecular dynamics simulations show that diffusion is determined by percolation of clusters of edges.