Fluid-Fluid Phase Separation in Cholesterol-Containing Membranes: Rafts and Non-Rafts

Aspirin inhibits formation of cholesterol rafts in fluid lipid membranes.

Aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs have a high affinity for phospholipid membranes, altering their structure and biophysical properties. Aspirin has been shown to partition into the lipid head groups, thereby increasing membrane fluidity. Cholesterol is another well known mediator of membrane fluidity, in turn increasing membrane stiffness. As well, cholesterol is believed ...

Cholesterol-induced fluid-phase immiscibility in membranes.

The fluid-phase behavior of binary mixtures of cholesterol with phosphatidylcholines is investigated using magnetic resonance methods. Phospholipid biradicals provide the electron spin resonance spectroscopic resolution of two immiscible fluid phases in the dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine-cholesterol system. Isotropic chemical shifts of the phospholipid carbonyl carbons in binary mixtures with c...

Cholesterol, lipid rafts, and disease.

Dynamics of Phase Separation in Confined Two-component Fluid Membranes

We investigate the dynamics of phase separation in two-component fluid membranes confined between parallel and rigid bounding plates. Through numerical simulation, we find dramatic slow coarsening of the order parameter field within the simulation time. In particular, a microphase separation is obtained as an equilibrium phase for sufficiently large values of the elastic coupling, being consist...

Dynamic phase separation of fluid membranes with rigid inclusions.

Membrane shape fluctuations induce attractive interactions between rigid inclusions. Previous analytical studies showed that the fluctuation-induced pair interactions are rather small compared to thermal energies, but also that multibody interactions cannot be neglected. In this paper, it is shown numerically that shape fluctuations indeed lead to the dynamic separation of the membrane into pha...