Dynamic correlations in lipid bilayer membranes over finite time intervals

Recent single-molecule measurements [Schoch et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 118, e2113202118 (2021)] have observed dynamic lipid–lipid correlations in membranes with submicrometer spatial resolution and submillisecond temporal resolution. While short from an instrumentation standpoint, these length and time scales remain long compared to microscopic molecular motions. Theoretical expressions are derived to infer experimentally measurable correlations from the two-body diffusion matrix appropriate for membrane-bound bodies coupled by hydrodynamic interactions. The temporal (and associated spatial) averaging resulting from finite acquisition times has the effect of washing out correlations as compared to naive predictions (i.e., the bare elements of the diffusion matrix), which would be expected to hold for instantaneous measurements. The theoretical predictions are shown to be in excellent agreement with Brownian dynamics simulations of experimental measurements. Numerical results suggest that the experimental measurement of membrane protein diffusion, in complement to lipid diffusion measurements, might help to resolve the experimental ambiguities encountered for certain black lipid membranes.