Dynamic shape remodeling of vesicles by internal active filaments

To interact with their environment, living cells use active cytoskeletal forces to form dynamic membrane structures such as tubular filopodia and sheet-like lamellipodia. To understand the formation and dynamics of these structures, we perform non-equilibrium simulations of dynamically triangulated vesicles under osmotic stress. We investigate vesicle shape remodeling driven by local effects of internal active filaments, as well as large-scale shape transformations resulting from volume changes controlled by osmotic pressure. We identify the morphological behavior of vesicles across varying volumes and filament properties, including concentration, mobility, stiffness, and length. Our simulations reveal dynamic, unstable vesicle structures—such as branched tubes, sheet-tubes, cup-tubes, and compartmentalized vesicles—composed of tubular, sheet-like, and cup-like segments. These structures continuously reorganize, interconverting between different shape components while maintaining nearly constant proportions. In particular, unstable branched tubes form under low vesicle volume and low filament mobility. Remarkably, their restructuring accelerates as filament mobility decreases, suggesting that their dynamics are primarily governed by global vesicle remodeling under osmotic stress. Notably, branched tubes arise only in the presence of active filaments and vanish when filaments become apolar due to shortening and loss of anisotropy. Our findings reveal novel non-equilibrium pathways for generating unstable, dynamic cellular structures such as branched tubes, sheet-tubes, and compartmentalized vesicles. These insights not only advance our understanding of complex organelle morphologies and cellular protrusions but also suggest new mechanisms for actively shaping synthetic membrane systems.