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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2010 Apr 16.
Published in final edited form as: J Phys Chem B. 2009 Apr 16;113(15):5208–5216. doi: 10.1021/jp809000e

Figure 5.

Figure 5

(A) TEs of DOTAP/DOPC/steroid–DNA complexes. The TE data for ergosterol 2 and ergocalciferol 3 follows a similar dependence on the steroid content in the membrane as that of cholesterol 1: TE rapidly increases with Φsteroid. In contrast, addition of β-estradiol 4, progesterone 5 and dehydroisoandrosterone 6 only modestly enhances TE until high steroid contents (35 mol% and higher) are reached, where phase separation occurs (cf. Fig. 7) and TE suddenly increases to values comparable with TE of cholesterol-containing complexes. The major structural differences between these two groups of molecules are the absence of the terminal alkyl chain and the presence of a second polar moiety in case of 4–6. (B) Chemical structure of the investigated steroid molecules.