Lipid-cholesterol interactions are responsible for different properties of biological membranes including those determining formation in the membrane of spatial inhomogeneities (lipid rafts). To get new information on these interactions, electron spin echo (ESE) spectroscopy, which is a pulsed version of electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), was applied to study 3β-doxyl-5α-cholestane (DCh), a spin-labeled analog of cholesterol, in phospholipid bilayer consisted of equimolecular mixture of 1,2-dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine and 1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine. DCh concentration in the bilayer was between 0.1 mol.% and 4 mol.%. For comparison, a reference system containing a spin-labeled 5-doxyl-stearic acid (5-DSA) instead of DCh was studied as well. The effects of "instantaneous diffusion" in ESE decay and in echo-detected (ED) EPR spectra were explored for both systems. The reference system showed good agreement with the theoretical prediction for the model of spin labels of randomly distributed orientations, but the DCh system demonstrated remarkably smaller effects. The results were explained by assuming that neighboring DCh molecules are oriented in a correlative way. However, this correlation does not imply the formation of clusters of cholesterol molecules, because conventional continuous wave EPR spectra did not show the typical broadening due to aggregation of spin labels and the observed ESE decay was not faster than in the reference system. So the obtained data evidence that cholesterol molecules at low concentrations in biological membranes can interact via large distances of several nanometers which results in their orientational self-ordering.
The clustering of molecules is an important feature of plasma membrane organization. It is challenging to develop methods for quantifying membrane heterogeneities because of their transient nature and small size. Here, we obtained evidence that transient membrane heterogeneities can be frozen at cryogenic temperatures which allows the application of solid-state experimental techniques sensitive to the nanoscale distance range. We employed the pulsed version of electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy, the electron spin echo (ESE) technique, for spin-labeled molecules in multilamellar lipid bilayers. ESE decays were refined for pure contribution of spin-spin magnetic dipole-dipolar interaction between the labels; these interactions manifest themselves at a nanometer distance range. The bilayers were prepared from different types of saturated and unsaturated lipids and cholesterol (Chol); in all cases, a small amount of guest spin-labeled substances 5-doxyl-stearic-acid (5-DSA) or 3β-doxyl-5α-cholestane (DChl) was added. The local concentration found of 5-DSA and DChl molecules was remarkably higher than the mean concentration in the bilayer, evidencing the formation of lipid-mediated clusters of these molecules. To our knowledge, formation of nanoscale clusters of guest amphiphilic molecules in biological membranes is a new phenomenon suggested only recently. Two-dimensional 5-DSA molecular clusters were found, whereas flat DChl molecules were found to be clustered into stacked one-dimensional structures. These clusters disappear when the Chol content is varied between the boundaries known for lipid raft formation at room temperatures. The room temperature EPR evidenced entrapping of DChl molecules in the rafts.
Biological membranes are supposed to have heterogeneous structure containing lipid rafts-lateral micro- and nanodomains enriched in cholesterol (chol) and sphingolipids. In this work, lipid bilayers containing a small amount of the spin-labeled chol analogue 3β-doxyl-5α-cholestane (chlstn) were studied using electron spin echo (ESE) spectroscopy, which is a pulsed version of electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR). Bilayers were prepared from an equimolecular mixture of 1,2-dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DPPC) and 1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DOPC) with chol added at different concentrations. The ESE decays recorded at 77 K become faster with increase of chlstn concentration. The chlstn-dependent contribution to ESE decay is remarkably nonexponential; however, the logarithm of this contribution can be rescaled for different chlstn concentrations to a universal function with the rescaling factor approximately proportional to concentration. This result shows that the chlstn-dependent contribution to the ESE decay can be employed to estimate the local (at the nanometer scale of distances) chlstn concentration. Analogous rescaling behavior is also observed for the bilayers with different chol concentrations, with the rescaling factor increasing with increase of the chol concentration. This result is evidence that chlstn molecules are distributed heterogeneously in the chol-containing bilayer and form clusters with enhanced chlstn (and probably chol) local concentration. The local concentration of chlstn molecules for large chol content (∼30 mol %) was enhanced by at least ∼70% versus chol-free bilayers. The suggested approach appears to be useful for exploring heterogeneities in lipid composition of biological membranes of different types.
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