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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 7.

Figure 7

Small-angle X-ray scattering data for DOTAP/DOPC/steroid–DNA complexes containing β-estradiol (A), progesterone (B) or dihydroisoandrosterone (C) show that the structure of these complexes retains lamellar for all Φsteroid studied (first and second harmonic order of the lamellar peaks are marked by q001 and q002). Black arrowheads point to the DNA peak at qDNA. No diffraction from steroid crystals is observed in the X-ray diffraction data, since they macroscopically separate from the CL–DNA complexes during sample preparation by centrifugation due to their low density. However, polarized microscopy demonstrates that steroid crystals coexist with CL–DNA complexes at Φsteroid ≥ 0.3. Examples of progesterone crystals and dehydroisoandrosterone crystals are shown in (D) and (E), respectively. (F) An enlarged view of the boxed section from (C) clearly shows the presence of the second order lamellar peak (q001) as well as the DNA peak at qDNA.