The function of sterols in membranes.

https://publications.mpi-cbg.de/Rietveld_1998_269.pdf

The differential miscibility of lipids as the basis for the formation of functional membrane rafts.

Lipid phase transitions and phase diagrams. II. Mictures involving lipids.

A highly sensitive and stable scanning microcalorimeter is employed in a reinvestigation of the effect of cholesterol on multilamellar suspensions of dimyristoylphosphatidylcholine (DMPC) and dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC). Below 20 mol % cholesterol the DPPC mixtures give heat-capacity curves each of which can be resolved into a narrow and a broad peak, suggesting the coexistence of two immiscible solid phases; above 20 mol % only the broad peak is observed and this disappears at about 50 mol %. The DMPC mixtures show a more complicated behavior; from about 13.5 to 20 mol % cholesterol the observed curves appear to be the sum of three component peaks. As with the DPPC mixtures, only a single broad peak is observed above 20 mol % cholesterol, and this broad peak becomes undetectable above about 50 mol %. These results are discussed.

High-sensitivity scanning calorimetric study of mixtures of cholesterol with dimyristoyl- and dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholines.

When phospholipids in the first shell of the lipid bilayer surrounding a calcium transport protein are replaced by cholesterol, there is a complete and reversible inactivation of ATPase activity. This phospholipid annulus normally excludes cholesterol and the lateral segregation of the lipids is essential for the protein to function.

F. Brants

Papers

Non-random distribution of cholesterol in phosphatidyl- choline bilayers