Cholesterol Surrogates: a Comparison of Cholesterol and 16:0 Ceramide in POPC Bilayers

Overview

Journal Biophys J

Publisher Cell Press

Specialty Biophysics

Date 2006 Oct 31

PMID 17071659

Citations 19

Authors

Sagar A Pandit

See-Wing Chiu

Eric Jakobsson

Ananth Grama

H L Scott

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Experimental evidence indicates that, under some circumstances, "surrogate" molecules may play the same role as cholesterol in ordering membrane lipids. The simplest molecule in this class is Ceramide. In this article, we describe atomic-level molecular dynamics simulations designed to shed light on this phenomenon. We run simulations of hydrated phosphoryl-oleoyl phosphatidylcholine (POPC) bilayers containing cholesterol, and containing ceramide, in concentrations ranging from 5% to 33%. We also perform a simulation of a pure POPC bilayer to verify the simulation force fields against experimental structural data for POPC. Our simulation data are in good agreement with experimental data for the partial molecular volumes, areas, form factors, and order parameters. These simulations suggest that ceramide and cholesterol have a very similar effect on the POPC bilayer, although ceramide is less effective in inducing order in the bilayer compared with cholesterol at the same concentrations.

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