Issue 16, 2015

Designing lipids for selective partitioning into liquid ordered membrane domains

Abstract

Self-organization of lipid molecules into specific membrane phases is key to the development of hierarchical molecular assemblies that mimic cellular structures. While the packing interaction of the lipid tails should provide the major driving force to direct lipid partitioning to ordered or disordered membrane domains, numerous examples show that the headgroup and spacer play important but undefined roles. We report here the development of several new biotinylated lipids that examine the role of spacer chemistry and structure on membrane phase partitioning. The new lipids were prepared with varying lengths of low molecular weight polyethylene glycol (EGn) spacers to examine how spacer hydrophilicity and length influence their partitioning behavior following binding with FITC-labeled streptavidin in liquid ordered (Lo) and liquid disordered (Ld) phase coexisting membranes. Partitioning coefficients (Kp Lo/Ld) of the biotinylated lipids were determined using fluorescence measurements in studies with giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs). Compared against DPPE-biotin, DPPE-cap-biotin, and DSPE-PEG2000-biotin lipids, the new dipalmityl-EGn-biotin lipids exhibited markedly enhanced partitioning into liquid ordered domains, achieving Kp of up to 7.3 with a decaethylene glycol spacer (DP-EG10-biotin). We further demonstrated biological relevance of the lipids with selective partitioning to lipid raft-like domains observed in giant plasma membrane vesicles (GPMVs) derived from mammalian cells. Our results found that the spacer group not only plays a pivotal role for designing lipids with phase selectivity but may also influence the structural order of the domain assemblies.

Graphical abstract: Designing lipids for selective partitioning into liquid ordered membrane domains

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
22 Dec 2014
Accepted
02 Mar 2015
First published
12 Mar 2015

Soft Matter, 2015,11, 3241-3250

Author version available

Designing lipids for selective partitioning into liquid ordered membrane domains

N. Momin, S. Lee, A. K. Gadok, D. J. Busch, G. D. Bachand, C. C. Hayden, J. C. Stachowiak and D. Y. Sasaki, Soft Matter, 2015, 11, 3241 DOI: 10.1039/C4SM02856B

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements