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Departments of Chemistry and Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195-1700 USA
Correspondence: Address reprint requests to Sarah L. Keller, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-1700. Tel.: 206-543-9613; Fax: 206-685-8665; E-mail: slkeller{at}chem.washington.edu.
We use fluorescence microscopy to directly observe liquid phases in giant unilamellar vesicles. We find that a long list of ternary mixtures of high melting temperature (saturated) lipids, low melting temperature (usually unsaturated) lipids, and cholesterol produce liquid domains. For one model mixture in particular, DPPC/DOPC/Chol, we have mapped phase boundaries for the full ternary system. For this mixture we observe two coexisting liquid phases over a wide range of lipid composition and temperature, with one phase rich in the unsaturated lipid and the other rich in the saturated lipid and cholesterol. We find a simple relationship between chain melting temperature and miscibility transition temperature that holds for both phosphatidylcholine and sphingomyelin lipids. We experimentally cross miscibility boundaries both by changing temperature and by the depletion of cholesterol with ß-cyclodextrin. Liquid domains in vesicles exhibit interesting behavior: they collide and coalesce, can finger into stripes, and can bulge out of the vesicle. To date, we have not observed macroscopic separation of liquid phases in only binary lipid mixtures.
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M. E. Beattie, S. L. Veatch, B. L. Stottrup, and S. L. Keller Sterol Structure Determines Miscibility versus Melting Transitions in Lipid Vesicles Biophys. J., September 1, 2005; 89(3): 1760 - 1768. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
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T. Baumgart, S. Das, W. W. Webb, and J. T. Jenkins Membrane Elasticity in Giant Vesicles with Fluid Phase Coexistence Biophys. J., August 1, 2005; 89(2): 1067 - 1080. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
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G. Oradd, P. W. Westerman, and G. Lindblom Lateral Diffusion Coefficients of Separate Lipid Species in a Ternary Raft-Forming Bilayer: A Pfg-NMR Multinuclear Study Biophys. J., July 1, 2005; 89(1): 315 - 320. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
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L. Jin, A. C. Millard, J. P. Wuskell, H. A. Clark, and L. M. Loew Cholesterol-Enriched Lipid Domains Can Be Visualized by di-4-ANEPPDHQ with Linear and Nonlinear Optics Biophys. J., July 1, 2005; 89(1): L04 - L06. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
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S. T. Hess, M. Kumar, A. Verma, J. Farrington, A. Kenworthy, and J. Zimmerberg Quantitative electron microscopy and fluorescence spectroscopy of the membrane distribution of influenza hemagglutinin J. Cell Biol., June 20, 2005; 169(6): 965 - 976. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
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E. J. Wallace, N. M. Hooper, and P. D. Olmsted The Kinetics of Phase Separation in Asymmetric Membranes Biophys. J., June 1, 2005; 88(6): 4072 - 4083. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
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