Lipid Bilayer Morphology with High Surface Area

Here, a lipid bilayer with the topology of a sphere, but an immense amount of extra surface area shows a variety of shapes that membranes naturally adopt. This particular membrane is made of a mixture of two different lipids and cholesterol. As the video progresses, the temperature is lowered slightly, and the ternary mixture phase separates into a light phase and a dark phase, as revealed by fluorescence microscopy. The line tension between the phases crushes the membrane into a new, more compact shape on the time scale of a few seconds.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• lipid
• bilayer
• membrane
• morphology
• phase separation
• microscopy

[Merdam9]

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