Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: UMLS:C0851184 (thinning)
 11,252 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Measurements of membrane capacitance, Cm, were performed on lipid bilayers of different lipidic composition (diphytanoyl phosphatidylcholine PPhPC, dioleoyl phosphatidylcholine DOPE, glycerylmonooleate GMO) and containing n-decane as solvent. In the same membranes, the absorption of the lipophilic ions dipicrylamine (DPA-) and tetraphenylborate (TPhB-), and the kinetics of their translocation between the two membrane faces have been studied. The data were obtained from charge pulse relaxation measurements. Upon increasing pressure the specific capacity Cm increased in a fully reversible and reproducible way reflecting a thinning of the membrane that is attributed to extrusion of n-decane from the black membrane area. High pressure decreased the rate constant, ki, for lipophilic ion translocation. After correcting for changes in the height of the energy barrier for translocation due to membrane thinning the pressure dependence of ki yields an apparent activation volume for translocation of approximately 14 cm3/mol both for DPA- and TPhB-. Changes in lipophilic ion absorption following a step of pressure developed with a rather slow time course due to diffusion limitations in solution. The stationary concentration of membrane absorbed lipophilic ions increased with pressure according to an apparent volume of absorption of about -10 cm3/mol. The relevance of the results for the interpretation of the effects of pressure on nerve membrane physiology is discussed.
 ...
PMID:Effects of hydrostatic pressure on lipid bilayer membranes. I. Influence on membrane thickness and activation volumes of lipophilic ion transport. 373 May 9

The formation of two spherical model membranes at the tips of two syringes has allowed us to study the role of gangliosides in membrane adhesion and look for changes in conductance between two such membranes during the process of adhesion. Membranes were formed in aqueous 100 mM NaCl, 10 mM KCl, 1 mM CaCl2 from 1% (w/v) egg phosphatidylcholine in n-decane, with or without mixed bovine brain gangliosides. After thinning to the 'black' bilayer state, two membranes were moved into contact. With gangliosides, the contact area and conductance increased colinearly with time over a 5 to 20 min period of adhesion. The role of electrostatic bridging by calcium was investigated. In the absence of calcium or in the presence of 2 mM EDTA, adhesion proceeded after a longer lag time at about one-half the normal rate. As the ganglioside concentration was increased from 0 to 15 mol%, the electrical conductance of individual membranes decreased 3-fold from 48 +/- 30 nS/cm2 to 17 +/- 13 nS/cm2. The conductance was pH dependent with a minimum at neutral values. At neutral pH, when two membranes containing 4.1 mol% gangliosides adhered, the region of adhesion had a specific conductance three times that of the nonadhering regions of membranes. Without gangliosides, the specific conductance of the contact region was the same as that of non-adhering regions of the membrane. These data suggest that mixed gangliosides can mediate an adhesion-dependent increase in conductance.
 ...
PMID:Role of gangliosides in adhesion and conductance changes in large spherical model membranes. 647 10

The frequency dependence of membrane admittance has been determined for a series of phosphatidylcholine/sterol/n-decane bilayers in the presence of an aqueous environment containing pentachlorophenol. Variations in the results among membranes can be related to differences in the kinetic parameters of a kinetic model of pentachlorophenol-induced charge transport by characterizing both measurements and model behavior in terms of a common equivalent circuit. The kinetic model assumes a three-layer structure for the membrane and immediate environment. Data from membranes formed with beta-hydroxysterols having a flat ring structure and an intact side-chain (cholestanol, cholesterol, 7-dehydrocholesterol), after correction for sterol-induced membrane thinning, suggest that these sterols affect charge translocation by altering both interior fluidity and surface dipolar fields. The effects almost cancel for the case of cholesterol. These sterols also affect interfacial processes, either by inhibiting proton exchange between the aqueous and lipid environments, or by suppressing the adsorption of pentachlorophenol anions. Stigmasterol, coprostanol and epicholesterol cause only minor alterations in both translocation and interfacial processes. None of the sterols investigated has a significant influence on the capacitance of the interfacial region.
 ...
PMID:The influence of sterols on pentachlorophenol-induced charge transfer across lipid bilayers studied by alternating current methods. 689 Dec 65

Electrical capacitance of the planar bilayer lipid membrane (BLM) formed from hydrogenated egg lecithin (HEL) has been studied during many passages through the phase transition temperature. In contrast to the BLM from individual synthetic phospholipids, membranes from HEL did not demonstrate any capacitance change at the phase transition temperature maximum, as measured by differential scanning calorimeter at 52 degrees C. Instead, two temperatures have been discerned by capacitance records: thickening at 42-43 degrees C and thinning at 57-59 degrees C. The first temperature region is close to the transition temperature of dipalmitoyllecithin, whereas the second is close to that of distearoyllecithin, two main components of the HEL. It was suggested that capacitance measurements were able to reveal a phase separation in the BLM from HEL which was not detected by differential scanning calorimetry. The phase transition of the BLM from the liquid crystal state to the gel state is followed by thickening of the bilayer structure, partly due to a gauche- trans transition of lipid molecules but mainly due to redistribution of the solvent n-decane.
 ...
PMID:Electrical capacitance of lipid bilayer membranes of hydrogenated egg lecithin at the temperature phase transition. 1263 7

We report for the first time rheological and structural properties of liquid decane, hexadecane, and tetracosane using nonequilibrium molecular-dynamics (NEMD) simulations under planar elongational flow (PEF). The underlying NEMD algorithm employed is the so-called p-SLLOD algorithm [C. Baig, B. J. Edwards, D. J. Keffer, and H. D. Cochran, J. Chem. Phys. 122, 114103 (2005)]. Two elongational viscosities are measured, and they are shown not to be equal to each other, indicating two independent viscometric functions in PEF. With an appropriate definition, it is observed that the two elongational viscosities converge to each other at very low elongation rates, i.e., in the Newtonian regime. For all three alkanes, tension-thinning behavior is observed. At high elongation rates, chains appear to be fully stretched. This is supported by the result of the mean-square end-to-end distance of chains (R(ete2)) and the mean-square radius of gyration of chains (R(g2)), and further supported by the result of the intramolecular Lennard-Jones (LJ) potential energy. It is also observed that (R(ete2)) and (R(g2)) show a different trend as a function of strain rate from those in shear flow: after reaching a plateau value, (R(ete2)) and (R(g2)) are found to increase further as elongation rate increases. A minimum in the hydrostatic pressure is observed for hexadecane and tetracosane at about epsilon(msigma2/epsilon)1/2=0.02. This phenomenon is shown to be associated with the intermolecular LJ potential energy. The bond-bending and torsional energies display similar trends, but a different behavior is observed for the bond-stretching energy. An important observation common in these three bonded-intramolecular interactions is that all three modes are suppressed to a small value at high elongation rates. We conjecture that a liquid-crystal-like, nematic structure is present in these systems at high elongation rates, which is characterized by a strong chain alignment with a fully stretched conformation.
 ...
PMID:Rheological and structural studies of liquid decane, hexadecane, and tetracosane under planar elongational flow using nonequilibrium molecular-dynamics simulations. 1591 64

The amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer's toxicity has undergone a resurgence with increasing evidence that it is not amyloid fibrils but a smaller oligomeric species that produces the deleterious results. In this paper we address the mechanism of this toxicity. Only oligomers increase the conductance of lipid bilayers and patch-clamped mammalian cells, producing almost identical current-voltage curves in both preparations. Oligomers increase the conductance of the bare bilayer, the cation conductance induced by nonactin, and the anion conductance induced by tetraphenyl borate. Negative charge reduces the sensitivity of the membrane to amyloid, but cholesterol has little effect. In contrast, the area compressibility of the lipid has a very large effect. Membranes with a large area compressibility modulus are almost insensitive to amyloid oligomers, but membranes formed from soft, highly compressible lipids are highly susceptible to amyloid oligomer-induced conductance changes. Furthermore, membranes formed using the solvent decane (instead of squalane) are completely insensitive to the presence of oligomers. One simple explanation for these effects on bilayer conductance is that amyloid oligomers increase the area per molecule of the membrane-forming lipids, thus thinning the membrane, lowering the dielectric barrier, and increasing the conductance of any mechanism sensitive to the dielectric barrier.
 ...
PMID:Soluble amyloid oligomers increase bilayer conductance by altering dielectric structure. 1713 May 16

An emulsion system was simulated under simple shear rates to analyze its rheological characteristics using a hierarchical multi-scale approach. The molecular dynamics (MD) simulation was used to describe the interface of droplets in an emulsion. The equations derived from the MD simulation relative to interfacial tension, temperature, and surfactant concentration were applied as input parameters within lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) calculations. In the LBM simulation, we calculated the relative viscosity of an emulsion under a simple shear rate along with changes in temperature, shear rate, and surfactant concentration. The equations from the MD simulation showed that the interfacial tension of the droplets tended to decrease with an increase in temperature and surfactant concentration. The relative viscosity from the LBM simulation decreased with an increase in temperature. The shear thinning phenomena explaining the inverse proportion between shear rate and viscosity were observed. An increase in the surfactant concentration caused an increase in the relative viscosity for a decane-in-water emulsion, because the increased deformation caused by the decreased interfacial tension significantly influenced the wall shear stress.
...
PMID:Multi-scale approach for the rheological characteristics of emulsions using molecular dynamics and lattice Boltzmann method. 2533 32

Biomimetic membranes assembled from block copolymers attract considerable interest because they exhibit greater stability and longetivity compared to lipid bilayers, and some enable the reconstitution of functional transmembrane biomolecules. Yet to-date, block copolymer membranes have not been achieved using the droplet interface bilayer (DIB) method, which uniquely allows assembling single- and multi-membrane networks between water droplets in oil. Herein, we investigate the formation of poly(ethylene oxide)-b-poly(dimethyl siloxane)-b-poly(ethylene oxide) triblock copolymer-stabilized interfaces (CSIs) between polymer-coated aqueous droplets in solutions comprising combinations of decane, hexadecane and AR20 silicone oil. We demonstrate that triblock-coated droplets do not spontaneously adhere in these oils because all are thermodynamically good solvents for the hydrophobic PDMS middle block. However, thinned planar membranes are reversibly formed at the interface between droplets upon the application of a sufficient transmembrane voltage, which removes excess solvent from between droplets through electrocompression. At applied voltages above the threshold required to initiate membrane thinning, electrowetting causes the area of the CSI between droplets to increase while thickness remains constant; the CSI electrowetting response is similar to that encountered with lipid-based DIBs. In combination, these results reveal that stable membranes can be assembled in a manner that is completely reversible when an external pressure is used to overcome a barrier to adhesion caused by solvent-chain interactions, and they demonstrate new capability for connecting and disconnecting aqueous droplets via polymer-stabilized membranes.
...
PMID:Reversible, voltage-activated formation of biomimetic membranes between triblock copolymer-coated aqueous droplets in good solvents. 2717 95