A light-scattering characterization of membrane vesicles

A technique has been developed in this paper which enables quasi-elastic laser light scattering to be used to accurately and quantitatively measure the average vesicle diffusion coefficient and the relative dispersion in the diffusion coefficient about this average for dilute polydisperse vesicle suspensions. This technique relies on a theoretical analysis of a modified form of the Z-averaged diffusion coefficient. This modified Z-averaged diffusion coefficient explicitly incorporates vesicle size, structure, and polydispersity in a description of the scattered light autocorrelation spectrum. Light-scattering experiments were performed on a dilute, lobster sarcoplasmic reticulum vesicle suspension and the measured average diffusion coefficient and the diffusion coefficient relative dispersion about this average were determined with accuracies of 2 and 10%, respectively. A comparison of vesicle size inferred from light-scattering results was made with size results from electron microscopic analysis of the same sample.