Lipid exhange between membranes: effects of temperature and ionic strength

Abstract

Transmembrane lipid exchange is critical to membrane function and pharmaceutical application. The exchange process is not fully understood and it is explored by quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitor method in this paper. It is found that the vesicle deformation discrepancy is not significant for the supported-lipid-bilayer-attached vesicles under different thermal and ionic strength conditions. And hence the total intermembrane contact area is determined by the vesicle adsorption amount. The maximum total intermembrane contact area decreases with the increase of temperature and the decrease of ionic strength. The changes of the vesicle adsorption rate and the transmembrane lipid exchange rate induced by temperature and ionic strength are elucidated to understand the observation above. The study helps explain some physiological phenomena and provides some guidelines for drug delivery researches.