Effects of disorder in location and size of fence barriers on molecular motion in cell membranes

The effect of disorder in the energetic heights and in the physical locations of fence barriers encountered by transmembrane molecules such as proteins and lipids in their motion in cell membranes is studied theoretically. The investigation takes as its starting point a recent analysis of a periodic system with constant distances between barriers and constant values of barrier heights, and employs effective medium theory to treat the disorder. The calculations make possible, in principle, the extraction of confinement parameters such as mean compartment sizes and mean intercompartmental transition rates from experimentally reported published observations. The analysis should be helpful both as an unusual application of effective medium theory and as an investigation of observed molecular movements in cell membranes.