Membranes are the most common cellular structures in both plants and animals. They are now recognized as being involved in almost all aspects of cellular activity ranging from motility and food entrapment in simple unicellular organisms, to energy transduction, immunorecognition, nerve conduction and biosynthesis in plants and higher organisms. This functional diversity is reflected in the wide variety of lipids and particularly of proteins that compose different membranes. An understanding of the physical principles that govern the molecular organization of membranes is essential for an understanding of their physiological roles since structure and function are much more interdependent in membranes than in, say, simple chemical reactions in solution. We must recognize, however, that the word ‘understanding’ means different things in different disciplines, and nowhere is this more apparent than in this multidisciplinary area where biology, chemistry and physics meet.

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Physical principles of membrane organization.

An assay for vesicle--vesicle fusion involving resonance energy transfer between N-(7-nitro-2,1,3-benzoxadiazol-4-yl), the energy donor, and rhodamine, the energy acceptor, has been developed. The two fluorophores are coupled to the free amino group of phosphatidylethanolamine to provide analogues which can be incorporated into a lipid vesicle bilayer. When both fluorescent lipids are in phosphatidylserine vesicles at appropriate surface densities (ratio of fluorescent lipid to total lipid), efficient energy transfer is observed. When such vesicles are fused with a population of pure phosphatidylserine vesicles by the addition of calcium, the two probes mix with the other lipids present to form a new membrane. This mixing reduces the surface density of the energy acceptor resulting in a decreased efficiency of resonance energy transfer which is measured experimentally. These changes in transfer efficiency allow kinetic and quantitative measurements of the fusion process. Using this system, we have studied the ability of phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylserine, and phosphatidylcholine--phosphatidylserine (1:1) vesicles to fuse with cultured fibroblasts. Under the conditions employed, the majority of the cellular uptake of vesicle lipid could be attributed to the adsorption of intact vesicles to the cell surface regardless of the composition of the vesicle bilayer.

Use of resonance energy-transfer to monitor membrane-fusion

Mechanisms and consequences of cellular cholesterol exchange and transfer

The mechanism of cholesterol and phosphatidylcholine exchange has been investigated by following the transfer of radiolabeled cholesterol and phosphatidylcholine from negatively charged, unilamellar cholesterol-egg yolk phosphatidylcholine donor vesicles to neutral acceptor vesicles of similar composition. Vesicles were incubated in the absence of protein and were stable to fusion over the course of the experiment. At intervals, donor and acceptor vesicles were separated by passage through a column of DEAE-Sepharose; less than 1% of the charged and 80-95% of the neutral vesicles were recovered in the eluate. Over 12 h at 37 degrees C, 90% of the donor vesicle [4-14C]cholesterol was transferred to the acceptor vesicles in a first-order process whose half-time was 2.3 +/- 0.3 h. This indicates that transfer of cholesterol molecules from the inner to outer monolayer of the vesicle bilayer is not rate limiting in exchange. In contrast to cholesterol exchange, the half-time for 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl[1-14C]phosphatidylcholine exchange was 48 +/- 5 h so that more than six molecules of cholesterol were transferred for each molecule of phosphatidylcholine. The interfacial flux of cholesterol from the donor bilayer is 5.3 x 10(-15) mol cm-2 s-1 (approximately 3 molecules/min for an average vesicle) and is similar to fluxes observed in other systems where phosphatidylcholine or cholesterol ester exchange is catalyzed by an exchange protein. When the acceptor vesicle concentration was increased 20-fold in cholesterol exchange experiments or 9-fold in phosphatidylcholine exchange experiments, the rate of label transfer was not affected. The activation energy of cholesterol exchange between 15 and 37 degrees C was 73 +/- 5 kJ mol-1. Transfer of cholesterol across a dialysis membrane is shown to be a slow process whose rate may be predicted by application of Fick's first law of diffusion. These results are only consistent with a mechanism of lipid exchange in which cholesterol and phosphatidylcholine diffuse through the aqueous phase; the experimental activation energy is associated with desorption of lipid from the donor bilayer into the aqueous phase.

Mechanism of cholesterol and phosphatidylcholine exchange or transfer between unilamellar vesicles

A new technique for studying the metabolism and intracellular transport of lipid molecules in living cells based on the use of fluorescent lipid analogs is described. The cellular processing of various intermediates (phosphatidic acid and ceramide) and end products (phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylethanolamine) in lipid biosynthesis is reviewed and a working model for compartmentalization during lipid biosynthesis is presented.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/229/4718/1051.full.pdf

Gabriele Duckwitz-Peterlein

Papers

Phospholipid exchange between bilayer membranes