Abstract
Plant sterols such as stigmasterol and sitosterol are mostly found in plant cell walls and membranes and have been used as cholesterol-lowering agents as well as anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antifungal, anti-ulcerative and antitumor activities. This study was conducted to examine the thermotropic and physicochemical properties of binary mixtures of plant sterol stigmasterol and zwitterionic dimyristoyl phosphatidylcholine (DMPC) multilamellar vesicles (MLVs) as a function of temperature and different stigmasterol concentrations by utilizing Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. In this study, we observed that stigmasterol incorporation induces variations in the lipid thermotropic phase behavior, lipid order (acyl chain flexibility) and dynamics (fluidity) and hydration state of the head group and/or the region near the head group of DMPC MLVs. Our results suggest that stigmasterol is fully capable of interacting with zwitterionic DMPC membranes and changes the biophysical properties of them.
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