Abstract
Sterols regulate several physico-chemical properties of biological membranes that are considered to be linked to function. Ergosterol is the main sterol molecule found in the cell membranes of yeasts and other fungi. Like the cholesterol found in mammalian cells, ergosterol has been proposed to have an ordering and condensing effect on saturated phospholipid membranes. The effects of cholesterol have been investigated extensively and result in an increase in the membrane thickness and the lipid acyl chain order. Less information is available on the effects of ergosterol on phospholipid membranes.Neutron Diffraction (ND) was used to characterize the effect of ergosterol on lipid multilayers prepared with deuterated natural phospholipids extracted from the yeast Pichia pastoris. The data show that the effect of ergosterol on membranes prepared from the natural phospholipid extract rich in unsaturated acyl chains, differs from what has been observed previously in membranes rich in saturated phospholipids. In contrast to cholesterol in synthetic phospholipid membranes, the presence of ergosterol up to 30 mol % in yeast phospholipid membranes only slightly altered the multilayer structure. In particular, only a small decrease in the multilayer d-spacing was observed as function of increasing ergosterol concentrations. This result highlights the need for further investigation to elucidate the effects of ergosterol in biological lipid mixtures.
Highlights
Sterols are fundamental cell membrane components, known for modulating its physico-chemical properties (Harayama and Riezman, 2018; Mouritsen et al, 2017)
The results show that the loading of ergosterol up to 30 mol % in the deuterated phospholipid (dPol) multilayer does not induce a large variation in the dspacing, in contrast to what has been previously reported for cholesterol in different phospholipid systems (Hung et al, 2007)
Lipid multilayers were prepared by mixing deuterated phospholipid extracted from Pichia Pastoris and ergosterol, with the aim to characterize the effect of the ergosterol concentration on the natural phospholipid membrane structure
Summary
Sterols are fundamental cell membrane components, known for modulating its physico-chemical properties (Harayama and Riezman, 2018; Mouritsen et al, 2017). Cholesterol is the final product of this biosynthetic process and is present at up to ∼ 50 mol% in the plasma membrane of higher vertebrates For this reason, many studies have focused on understanding the role of cholesterol on the structure, dynamics and biological function of cell membranes (McMullen et al, 2004; Ohvo-Rekila et al, 2002; Rog et al, 2009). Ergosterol has an extra carbon-carbon double bond in the second sterol ring and a slightly different chemical structure of the acyl chain (Fig. S1). These structural differences were suggested to be responsible for the different effect of ergosterol and cholesterol on the physical properties of phospholipid membranes, such as membrane thickness and lipid acyl chain ordering (Hildenbrand and Bayerl, 2005; Shahedi et al, 2006)
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