Effects of Shape on Interaction Dynamics of Tetrahedral Nanoplastics and the Cell Membrane

Cellular uptake of nanoplastics is instrumental in their environmental accumulation and transfer to humans through the food chain. Despite extensive studies using spherical plastic nanoparticles, the influence of the morphological characteristics of environmentally released nanoplastics is understudied. Using dissipative particle dynamics simulations, we modeled the interactions between a cell membrane and hydrophobic nanotetrahedra, which feature high shape anisotropy and large surface curvature seen for environmental nanoplastics. We observe robust uptake of nanotetrahedra with sharp vertices and edges by the lipid membrane. Two local energy minimum configurations of nanotetrahedra embedded in the membrane bilayer were identified for particles of large sizes. Further analysis of particle dynamics within the membrane shows that the two interaction states exhibit distinct translational and rotational dynamics in the directions normal and parallel to the plane of the membrane. The membrane confinement significantly arrests the out-of-plane motion, resulting in caged translation and subdiffusive rotation. While the in-plane diffusion remains Brownian, we find that the translational and rotational modes decouple from each other as the particle size increases. The rotational diffusion decreases by a greater extent compared to the translational diffusion, deviating from the continuum theory predictions. These results provide fundamental insights into the shape effect on the nanoparticle dynamics in crowded lipid membranes.