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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1985 Apr;82(7):2029–2033. doi: 10.1073/pnas.82.7.2029

Fast and slow orientational fluctuations in membranes

Horst Vogel 1, Fritz Jähnig 1
PMCID: PMC397483  PMID: 16578785

Abstract

Fluorescence anisotropy measurements on isotropically distributed membranes yield the well-known orientational order parameter as a measure of orientational fluctuations of the fluorophore that are fast compared to the fluorescence lifetime. Measurements on oriented membranes provide four order parameters, two for fast orientational fluctuations and two for slow, from which their approximate angular distributions can be derived. This is exemplified for the fluctuations of lipids in membranes with and without protein. Steady-state fluorescence anisotropy experiments on oriented membranes are carried out, using diphenylhexatriene as a fluorescence probe for lipid fluctuations and melittin as a membrane protein. Protein molecules in a fluid lipid membrane restrict the fast lipid fluctuations and induce slow lipid fluctuations. The angular distribution of the slow fluctuations indicates that lipid molecules at the protein surface are tilted with respect to the membrane normal. The spatial coherence length of these fluctuations is of the order of 15 Å.

Keywords: fluorescence anisotropy, oriented membranes, order parameters, lipid fluctuations, lipid-protein interaction

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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