Kavli Affiliate: Gerald W. Feigenson | Summary:We have developed a new model to describe FRET efficiency (E FRET) between freely-diffusing membrane probes in phase-separated bilayers (Finite Phase-separation FRET, or FP-FRET), that in principle applies to any system where phase domain dimensions are larger than ~Ro . Here we use Monte Carlo techniques to simulate E […]

Kavli Affiliate: Gerald W. Feigenson | Summary:Multicomponent lipid mixtures exhibit complex phase behavior, including coexistence of nanoscopic fluid phases in ternary mixtures mimicking the composition of the outer leaflet of mammalian plasma membrane. The physical mechanisms responsible for the small size of phase domains are unknown, due in part to the difficulty of determining the […]

Kavli Affiliate: Gerald W. Feigenson | Summary:The presence and the properties of lipid bilayer nanometer-scale domains might be important for understanding the membranes of living cells. We used molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to investigate perturbations of a small patch of fluid-phase DPPC bilayer upon incorporation of fluorescent indocarbocyanine lipid probes commonly used to study membranes […]