CiteULike is a free online bibliography manager. Register and you can start organising your references online.

Characterization of lipid bilayer phases by confocal microscopy and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy Export

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 96, No. 15. (20 July 1999), pp. 8461-8466.

Citation Format

[Posts]

View FullText article


X Reviews [Write a review of this article]

X Find related articles from these CiteULike users

X Find related articles with these CiteULike tags

X Posting History

X Abstract

We report the application of confocal imaging and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) to characterize chemically well-defined lipid bilayer models for biomembranes. Giant unilamellar vesicles of dilauroyl phosphatidylcholine/dipalmitoyl phosphatidylcholine (DLPC/DPPC)/cholesterol were imaged by confocal fluorescence microscopy with two fluorescent probes, 1,1′-dieicosanyl-3,3,3′,3′-tetramethylindocarbocyanine perchlorate (DiI-C) and 2-(4,4-difluoro-5,7-dimethyl-4-bora-3a,4a-diaza--indacene-3-pentanoyl)-1-hexadecanoyl--glycero-3-phosphocholine (Bodipy-PC). Phase separation was visualized by differential probe partition into the coexisting phases. Three-dimensional image reconstructions of confocal -scans through giant unilamellar vesicles reveal the anisotropic morphology of coexisting phase domains on the surface of these vesicles with full two-dimensional resolution. This method demonstrates by direct visualization the exact superposition of like phase domains in apposing monolayers, thus answering a long-standing open question. Cholesterol was found to induce a marked change in the phase boundary shapes of the coexisting phase domains. To further characterize the phases, the translational diffusion coefficient, , of the DiI-C was measured by FCS. values at ∼25°C ranged from ∼ 3 × 10 cm/s in the fluid phase, to ∼ 2 × 10 cm/s in high-cholesterol-content phases, to ∼ 2 × 10 cm/s in the spatially ordered phases that coexist with fluid phases. In favorable cases, FCS could distinguish two different values of in a region of two-phase coexistence on a single vesicle.


X BibTeX record

X RIS record


Privacy Statement | Terms & Conditions
CiteULike organises scholarly (or academic) papers or literature and provides bibliographic (which means it makes bibliographies) for universities and higher education establishments. It helps undergraduates and postgraduates. People studying for PhDs or in postdoctoral (postdoc) positions. The service is similar in scope to EndNote or RefWorks or any other reference manager like BibTeX, but it is a social bookmarking service for scientists and humanities researchers.