Figure 3.

Maturation of HDL from discoidal to spherical. Coarse-grained MD simulates the maturation of HDL. Snapshots (a–e) show the structures resulting from the stepwise addition of cholesterol ester and illustrate the resulting shape change. The two apo A-I proteins are shown in blue and red, and the DPPC lipids are shown in light tan. The remaining coloured molecules, which can barely be seen, are the cholesterol ester molecules that are quickly absorbed into the HDL particle forming a hydrophobic core. See figure 4 for a detailed view of the hydrophobic core.