Differential lipid packing abilities and dynamics in giant unilamellar vesicles composed of short-chain saturated glycerol-phospholipids, sphingomyelin and cholesterol.
The ability of membrane components to arrange themselves heterogeneously within the bilayer induces the formation of microdomains. Much work has been devoted to mimicking domain-assembly in artificial bilayers and characterizing their physico-chemical properties. Ternary lipid mixtures composed of unsaturated phospholipids, sphingomyelin and cholesterol give rise to large, round domains. Here, we replaced the unsaturated phospholipid in the ternary mixture with sphingomyelin and cholesterol by saturated glycero-phospholipids of different chain length and characterized the critical role of cholesterol in sorting these lipids by confocal imaging and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS). More cholesterol is needed to obtain phase segregation in ternary mixtures, in which the unsaturated phospholipid is replaced by a saturated one. Finally, lipid dynamics in distinct phases is very low and astonishingly similar, thereby suggesting the poor ability of cholesterol in sorting short-chain saturated glycero-phospholipids and sphingomyelin.
Kahya
Nicoletta
N
Dresden University of Technology, c/o Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Pftotenhauerstrasse 108, 01307 Dresden, Germany.
Scherfeld
Dag
D
Schwille
Petra
P
D002784:Cholesterol; D020404:Glycerophospholipids; D008055:Lipids / Q000737:chemistry*; D008081:Liposomes / Q000737:chemistry*; D021962:Membrane Microdomains / Q000737:chemistry*; D008856:Microscopy, Fluorescence; D013109:Sphingomyelins
D020404:Glycerophospholipids; D008055:Lipids; D008081:Liposomes; D013109:Sphingomyelins; D002784:Cholesterol