Skip to main content
. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2011 Aug 15.
Published in final edited form as: Biochim Biophys Acta. 2008 Oct 1;1788(1):53–63. doi: 10.1016/j.bbamem.2008.09.010

Figure 5.

Figure 5

Section of a membrane of a single giant unilamellar vesicle through time, at a series of temperatures. The membrane has a critical temperature of Tc~31.9°C. At 33.0°C, short-lived composition fluctuations are present. At 32.4°C, the fluctuations are larger and persist longer but the membrane remains homogeneous on average through time. At 31.75°C, just below the critical temperature, the membrane contains domains with a wide distribution of sizes. At 29.0°C, thermal fluctuations cause capillary waves which appear as rough domain edges. At 19.0°C, line tension is higher and domain edges are smooth. The vesicle was made and imaged as described previously (12). The vesicle is composed of 25:20:55 mol% of diphytanoyl phosphatidylcholine, dipalmitoyl phosphatidylcholine and cholesterol, with 0.8 mol% of the dye Texas Red dipalmitoyl phosphatidylethanolamine. Scale bar is 20 μm. The area shown in each image represents only ~4% of the vesicle surface area.