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Automated Lipid Bilayer Membrane Formation Using a Polydimethylsiloxane Thin Film
Published on: July 10, 2016
A novel type of membrane based on cholesteryl phosphocholine, cholesteryl phosphate, or sitosteryl phosphate, and
Mari Gotoh1, Nigel Ribeiro, Bernard Michels
1Centre de Neurochimie, 5, rue Blaise Pascal, F-67084-Strasbourg.
Abstract:
Mixtures of amphiphilic cholesteryl phosphate (CP), sitosteryl phosphate (SP), or cholesteryl phosphocholine (CPC) with the nonphosphoryl diacyl lipid dimyristoylglycerol (DMG) or with cholesterol give self-organized systems (giant vesicles) in a wide range of pH, as demonstrated by fluorescence microscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, and small-angle X-ray scattering. The water permeability of a 1 : 1 molar mixture of CPC and DMG was also measured by a stopped-flow/light-scattering method. The novel self-organized systems are akin to natural eukaryotic ones, the only difference being the site of the phosphate-containing head-group, located on cholesterol instead of DMG. They might be present in some organisms not yet studied for the composition of their membranes.
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