We show that a metastable multilamellar vesicle ("onion"), in contact with excess solvent, can spontaneously deplete solute molecules from its interior through an unusual, entropy-driven mechanism. Fluctuation entropy is gained as the uneven partition of solute molecules helps the onion relieve tension in its lamellae. This mechanism accounts for recent experiments on the interaction between un...

A small-angle neutron-x-ray-light-scattering model for multilamellar vesicles is developed on the basis of a simple geometry. N spherical shells with radii of an arithmetic series are allowed for displacements DeltaR which are limited by DeltaR<R/N due to sterical reasons, with R being the radius of the vesicle. The model shows many properties over a large Q range which include a Guinier region...

It was previously shown (Cohen, F. S., J. Zimmerberg, and A. Finkelstein, 1980, J. Gen. Physiol., 75:251-270) that multilamellar phospholipid vesicles can fuse with decane-containing phospholipid bilayer membranes. An essential requirement for fusion was an osmotic gradient across the planar membrane, with the vesicle-containing (cis) side hyperosmotic with respect to the opposite (trans) side....

The structure of a self-assembly formed from a cationic azobenzene derivative, 4-cholesterocarbonyl-4'-(N,N,N-triethylamine butyloxyl bromide) azobenzene (CAB) and surfactant sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) in aqueous solution was studied by cryo-TEM and synchrotron radiation small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). Both unilamellar and multilamellar vesicles could be observed. CAB in vesicles were ca...

Liposomes with chlorophyll a are model membranes providing a hydrophobic environment for chlorophyll a. Physical and chemical studies on these models could lead to relevant insights for in vivo primary reactions in photosynthetic membranes. The objective of our research was to prove that the spectral and electrochemical features of chlorophyll a allow it to be used as a fluorescence marker and ...

Cover Illustration: Electron micrograph showing an area near the interaction sites between Iba1-immunostained microglial cell (shaded in violet) and surface of a motor neuron at spinal cord ventral horn red) following sciatic nerve transection. The extracellular space is delimited yellow. Extracellular multilamellar bodies vesicles derived from degenerating afferent synaptic boutons are seen in...

Using total internal fluorescence microscopy, highly parallel measurements of single lipid vesicles unexpectedly reveal that a small fraction of vesicles rupture in multiple discrete steps when destabilized by a membrane-active peptide which is in contrast to classical solubilization models. To account for this surprizing kinetic behaviour, we identified that this vesicle subpopulation consists...

In this Letter we present small-angle neutron scattering data from a biomimetic system composed of the phospholipids dimyristoyl and dihexanoyl phosphorylcholine (DMPC and DHPC, respectively). Doping DMPC-DHPC multilamellar vesicles with either the negatively charged lipid dimyristoyl phosphorylglycerol (DMPG, net charge -1) or the divalent cation, calcium (Ca2+), leads to the spontaneous forma...