Complex phase behavior of GUVs containing different Sphingomyelins

Understanding the lateral organization of biological membranes plays a key role on the road to fully appreciate the physiological functions of this fundamental barrier between the inside and outside regions of a cell. Ternary lipid bilayers composed of a high and a low melting temperature lipid and cholesterol represent a model system which mimics some of the important thermodynamical features of much more complex lipid mixtures such as those found in mammal membranes. The phase diagram of these ternary mixtures can be studied exploiting fluorescence microscopy in Giant Unilamellar Vesicles and it is typically expected to give rise, for specific combinations of composition and temperature, to regions of two-phase coexistence and a region with three-phase coexistence, namely the liquid ordered, liquid disordered and solid phases.

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