Lateral phase separation in mixtures of lipids and cholesterol

• DOI: 10.1209/epl/i2004-10057-1
• Publication Date: 2004-07-06T14:16:02Z
• Authors: S Komura; H Shirotori; P. D Olmsted; D Andelman
• Keywords: Lipid raft

In an effort to understand ``rafts'' in biological membranes, we propose phenomenological models for saturated and unsaturated lipid mixtures, lipid-cholesterol mixtures. We consider simple couplings between the local composition internal membrane structure, their influence on transitions liquid ``gel'' phases. Assuming that gel transition temperature of is shifted by presence lipid, cholesterol acts as external field chain melting transition, a variety phase diagrams are obtained. The binary mixtures saturated/unsaturated lipids lipid/cholesterol semi-quantitative agreement with experiments. Our results also apply regions ternary diagram lipid/lipid/cholesterol systems.