部分フッ素化リン脂質の合成とその膜構造・物性および 膜タンパク質研究への展望

抄録

Since the carbon–fluorine bond is one of the strongest bonds, fluorocarbons are chemically and thermally very stable. Owing to the unique properties of the fluorinated segments, fluorinated amphiphilic molecules have attracted much attention in biotechnology and biomedical research fields. In the 1990s, some partially fluorinated phospholipids were synthesized and their properties were investigated by the groups of Santaella and Vierling with the intention to apply the stable liposome made from partially fluorinated phospholipids to drug delivery. While recently we have been working on synthesizing and characterizing a series of partially fluorinated phosphatidylcholines (PF–PCs) that have even numbers of carbon atoms in their partially fluorinated acyl chains as similar to naturally occurring PCs with the intention to use PF–PCs as new tools for membrane protein researches. In this review article, we focus on 1,2–di(11,11,12,12,13,13,14,14,14–nonafluorotetradecanoyl)–sn–glycero–3–phosphocholine (F4–DMPC) within the series of PF–PCs that we synthesized, and describe the synthetic method, characterization of F4–DMPC bilayers and the behavior of bacteriorhodopsin, a membrane protein reconstituted in F4–DMPC bilayer liposomes. Finally, we briefly discuss the prospects of PF–PC as tools for membrane protein researches.