Bending rigidity of SOPC membranes containing cholesterol

Bilayer membranes in the fluid state exhibit a large resistance to changes in surface area, negligible resistance to surface shear deformation, and a small but finite resistance to bending. The presence of cholesterol in the membrane is known to increase its resistance to area dilation. In this repo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biophysical journal 1993-06, Vol.64 (6), p.1967-1970
Main Authors: Song, J., Waugh, R.E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Artificial membranes and reconstituted systems
Biological and medical sciences
Cholesterol
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Lipid Bilayers
Mathematics
Membrane physicochemistry
Models, Theoretical
Molecular biophysics
Molecular Conformation
Phosphatidylcholines - chemistry
Pressure
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Summary:Bilayer membranes in the fluid state exhibit a large resistance to changes in surface area, negligible resistance to surface shear deformation, and a small but finite resistance to bending. The presence of cholesterol in the membrane is known to increase its resistance to area dilation. In this report, a new method for measuring bilayer membrane bending stiffness has been used to investigate the effect of cholesterol on the bending rigidity of SOPC (1,stearoyl-2,oleoyl-phosphatidylcholine) membranes. The curvature elasticity (kc) for membranes saturated with cholesterol was measured to be 3.3 x 10(-19) J, approximately 3-fold larger than that the modulus for cholesterol-free SOPC membrane. These findings are consistent with previous measurements of bending stiffness based on thermal fluctuations, which showed a similar approximately 3-fold increase in the modulus with cholesterol addition (Evans and Rawicz, 1990, Phys. Rev. Lett. 64:2094) and provide further substantiation of the important contribution that cholesterol makes to membrane cohesion and stability.
ISSN:0006-3495
1542-0086
DOI:10.1016/S0006-3495(93)81566-2