Liquid–liquid phase coexistence in lipid membranes observed by natural abundance 1H–13C solid-state NMR

Abstract

We demonstrate that ¹H–¹³C solid-state MAS NMR is suitable to detect liquid disordered/liquid ordered phase coexistence in a DOPC/DPPC/cholesterol mixture with natural abundance of isotopes as an alternative to ²H NMR. Such methodology is potentially applicable to study lipid phase coexistence phenomena in biological matter with high lipid content, e.g. lung surfactant or myelin, for which isotopic labeling is not possible.