Lipid Sorting Revealed by SANS

Abstract

We have investigated the lipid sorting in a binary small unilamellar vesicle (SUV) composed of cone-shaped (1, 2-dihexanoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine: DHPC) and cylinder-shaped (1, 2-dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine: DPPC) lipids. In order to reveal the lipid sorting we adopted a contrast matching technique of small angle neutron scattering (SANS), which extracts the distribution of deuterated lipids in the bilayer quantitatively. The SANS profile of deuterated SUVs at the contrast matching condition showed a characteristic scattering profile, indicating an asymmetric distribution of cone-shaped lipids in the bilayer. The fitting of the observed SANS profile revealed that most DHPC molecules are localized in the outer leaflet, which supports that the shape of the lipid is strongly coupled with the membrane curvature. We compared the obtained asymmetric distribution of the cone-shaped lipids in the bilayer with the theoretical prediction based on the curvature energy model.