Deuterium (2H) NMR was used to study bilayer hydrophobic thickness and mechanical properties when cholesterol and/or synthetic amphiphillic polypeptides were added to deuterated POPC lipid bilayer membranes in the liquid-crystalline (fluid) phase. Smoothed acyl chain orientational order profiles were used to calculate bilayer hydrophobic thickness. Addition of 30 mol% cholesterol to POPC at 25 degrees C increased the bilayer thickness from 2.58 to 2.99 nm. The peptides were chosen to span the bilayers with more or less mismatch between the hydrophobic peptide length and membrane hydrophobic thickness. The average thickness of the pure lipid bilayers was significantly perturbed upon addition of peptide only in cases of large mismatch, being increased (decreased) when the peptide hydrophobic length was greater (less) than that of the pure bilayer, consistent with the "mattress" model of protein lipid interactions (Mouritsen, O.G., and M. Bloom. 1984. Biophys. J. 46:141-153). The experimental results were also used to examine the combined influence of the polypeptides and cholesterol on the orientational order profile and thickness expansivity of the membranes. A detailed model for the spatial distribution of POPC and cholesterol molecules in the bilayers was proposed to reconcile the general features of these measurements with micromechanical measurements of area expansivity in closely related systems. Experiments to test the model were proposed.
Deuterium (2H) and phosphorus (31P) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and freeze-fracture electron microscopy were used to study spontaneous vesiculation in model membranes composed of POPC:POPS with or without cholesterol. The NMR spectra indicated the presence of a central isotropic line, the intensity of which is reversibly and linearly dependent upon temperature in the L alpha phase, with no hysteresis when cycling between higher and lower temperatures. Freeze-fracture microscopy showed small, apparently connected vesicles that were only present when the samples were frozen (for freeze-fracture) from an initial temperature of 40-60 degrees C, and absent when the samples are frozen from an initial temperature of 20 degrees C. Analysis of motional narrowing was consistent with the isotropic lines being due to lateral diffusion in (and tumbling of) small vesicles (diameters approximately 50 nm). These results were interpreted in terms of current theories of shape fluctuations in large unilamellar vesicles which predict that small daughter vesicles may spontaneously "erupt" from larger parent vesicles in order to expel the excess area created by thermal expansion of the bilayer surface at constant volume. Assuming that all the increased area due to increasing temperature is associated with the isotropic lines, the NMR results allowed a novel estimate of the coefficient of area expansion alpha A in multilamellar vesicles (MLVs) which is in good agreement with micromechanical measurements upon giant unilamellar vesicles of similar composition. Experiments performed on unilamellar vesicles, which had been placed upon glass beads, confirmed that alpha A determined in this way is unchanged compared with the MLV case. Addition of the highly positively charged (extrinsic) myelin basic protein (MBP) to a POPC:POPS system showed that membrane eruptions of the type described here occur in response to the presence of this protein.
Human myelin basic protein (MBP) is shown to disrupt multilamellar phosphatidylcholine bilayers into small lipoprotein particles in a manner similar to the cytolytic peptide melittin (Dufourc, E. J., Smith, I. C. P., & Dufourcq, J. (1986) Biochemistry 25, 6448-6455). This bilayer fragmentation, as monitored by 31P nuclear magnetic resonance, is temperature-dependent and completely inhibited by the presence of small amounts of negatively charged phosphatidylserine. The stabilizing property of phosphatidylserine is lost with the neutralization of its negative charges upon membrane binding of cationic species such as calcium ions. No MBP-induced fragmentation is observed with bilayers of negative or zwitterionic lipid mixtures which mimic the myelin lipid composition. The membrane fragmentation observed in vitro in the presence of MBP could play a role in vivo in demyelinating diseases.
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