Three (bola)amphiphilic spirooxazines have been synthesized and their photochromism has been characterized. The large biphotochromic structure of 2 significantly affects its conformational flexibility and the rate constants for thermal ring closure are particularly dependent on the lipid phase state. Two comprehensive ion permeation studies were performed to examine the effect of spirooxazine i...

A prediction algorithm based on physical characteristics of the twenty amino acids and refined by comparison to the proposed bacteriorhodopsin structure was devised to delineate likely membrane-buried regions in the primary sequences of proteins known to interact with the lipid bilayer. Application of the method to the sequence of the carboxyl terminal one-third of bovine rhodopsin predicted a ...

Abstract We consider a model of bilayer lipid membrane with bola-lipids. The bola-lipid is modeled by linking tails of the hydrophobic chains in the opposite monolayers within bilayer as a first approximation. A number of thermodynamical characteristics are calculated analytically and compared with the ones of a regular membrane without chains linkage. Pronounced difference between lateral pres...

Beta-barrel membrane proteins occur in the outer membranes of Gram-negative bacteria, mitochondria and chloroplasts. The membrane-spanning sequences of h-barrel membrane proteins are less hydrophobic than those of a-helical membrane proteins, which is probably the main reason why completely different folding and membrane assembly pathways have evolved for these two classes of membrane proteins....

To Sanni 5 CONTENTS ABBREVIATIONS 8 LIST OF ORIGINAL PUBLICATIONS 10 SUMMARY 11 1. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE 13 1.1. Biological membranes 13 Structure and composition 13 Dynamics and organization 13 1.2. Lipid dynamics 15 Intra-and intermolecular dynamics 15 Lateral pressure profile 16 Lipid bilayer as a permeability barrier 17 1.3. Membrane hydration 18 1.4. Membrane lateral heterogeneity 19 1....

Cortisone is an injected anti-inflammatory drug that can cause painful side effects known as "steroid flares" which are caused by cortisone crystallizing at the injection site. We used molecular dynamics simulations and X-ray diffraction to study the interaction of cortisone with model lipid membranes made of 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (POPC) at drug concentrations from 0 ...

Multicomponent lipid bilayer membranes display rich phase transition and associated compositional lipid domain formation behavior. When both leaflets of the bilayer contain domains, they are often found co-localized across the leaflets, implying the presence of a thermodynamic interleaflet coupling. In this work, it is demonstrated that fluctuation-induced interactions between domains embedded ...

During the vesicular trafficking process, cellular membranes undergo dynamic morphological changes, in particular at the vesicle generation and fusion steps. Changes in membrane shape are regulated by small GTPases, coat proteins and other accessory proteins, such as BAR domain-containing proteins. In addition, membrane deformation entails changes in the lipid composition as well as asymmetric ...