Abstract
A persistent challenge in membrane biophysics has been to quantitatively predict how membrane physical properties change upon addition of new amphiphiles (e.g., lipids, alcohols, peptides, or proteins) in order to assess whether the changes are large enough to plausibly result in biological ramifications. Because of their roles as general anesthetics, n-alcohols are perhaps the best-studied amphiphiles of this class. When n-alcohols are added to model and cell membranes, changes in membrane parameters tend to be modest. One striking exception is found in the large decrease in liquid-liquid miscibility transition temperatures (T(mix)) observed when short-chain n-alcohols are incorporated into giant plasma membrane vesicles (GPMVs). Coexisting liquid-ordered and liquid-disordered phases are observed at temperatures below T(mix) in GPMVs as well as in giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) composed of ternary mixtures of a lipid with a low melting temperature, a lipid with a high melting temperature, and cholesterol. Here, we find that when GUVs of canonical ternary mixtures are formed in aqueous solutions of short-chain n-alcohols (n ≤ 10), T(mix) increases relative to GUVs in water. This shift is in the opposite direction from that reported for cell-derived GPMVs. The increase in T(mix) is robust across GUVs of several types of lipids, ratios of lipids, types of short-chain n-alcohols, and concentrations of n-alcohols. However, as chain lengths of n-alcohols increase, nonmonotonic shifts in T(mix) are observed. Alcohols with chain lengths of 10-14 carbons decrease T(mix) in ternary GUVs of dioleoyl-PC/dipalmitoyl-PC/cholesterol, whereas 16 carbons increase T(mix) again. Gray et al. observed a similar influence of the length of n-alcohols on the direction of the shift in T(mix). These results are consistent with a scenario in which the relative partitioning of n-alcohols between liquid-ordered and liquid-disordered phases evolves as the chain length of the n-alcohol increases.