Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2025 Oct;1867(7):184436.
doi: 10.1016/j.bbamem.2025.184436. Epub 2025 Aug 6.

Two phase coexistence in ternary mixtures of saturated and polyunsaturated phosphatidylcholines with cholesterol

James H Davis  1
Affiliations
Free article
Review

Two phase coexistence in ternary mixtures of saturated and polyunsaturated phosphatidylcholines with cholesterol

James H Davis. Biochim Biophys Acta Biomembr. 2025 Oct.
Free article

Abstract

Combining 2H and 14N nuclear magnetic resonance measurements on ternary lipid/cholesterol mixtures it is possible to quantitate the phase separation into coexisting ℓo and ℓd domains using a single sample whose composition is within the two phase region. Mixtures of each of the unsaturated phospholipids dioleoyl phosphatidylcholine, dilinoleoyl phosphatidylcholine and dilinolenoyl phosphatidylcholine with the saturated dipalmitoyl phosphatidylcholine and cholesterol all exhibit ℓo and ℓd phase coexistence over a substantial range of compositions and temperatures. A higher degree of unsaturation broadens the temperature range of two phase coexistence and results in the ℓd phase domains actually being significantly more 'fluid' at lower temperatures than they are at higher temperatures.

Keywords: (14)N nuclear magnetic resonance; (2)H nuclear magnetic resonance; Dilinolenoylphosphatidylcholine; Dilinoleoylphosphatidylcholine; Dioleoylphosphatidylcholine; Liquid disordered phase; Liquid ordered phase; Membrane rafts; Polyunsaturated lipids.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: James H Davis reports financial support was provided by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. James H Davis reports financial support was provided by Canada Foundation for Innovation. James H Davis reports financial support was provided by Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

LinkOut - more resources