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Monolayer Spontaneous Curvature of Raft-Forming Membrane Lipids

Monolayer spontaneous curvatures for cholesterol, DOPE, POPE, DOPC, DPPC, DSPC, POPC, SOPC, and egg sphingomyelin were obtained using small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) on inverted hexagonal phases (HII). Spontaneous curvatures of bilayer forming lipids were estimated by adding controlled amounts to a HII forming template following previously established protocols. Spontanous curvatures of both phosphatidylethanolamines and cholesterol were found to be at least a factor of two more negative than those of phosphatidylcholines, whose J0 are closer to zero. Interestingly, a significant positive J0 value (+0.1 1/nm) was retrieved for DPPC at 25 °C. We further determined the temperature dependence of the spontaneous curvatures J0(T) in the range from 15 to 55 \degC, resulting in a quite narrow distribution of -1 to -3 * 10^-3 1/nm°C for most investigated lipids. The data allowed us to estimate the monolayer spontaneous curvatures of ternary lipid mixtures showing liquid ordered / liquid disordered phase coexistence. We report spontaneous curvature phase diagrams for DSPC/DOPC/Chol, DPPC/DOPC/Chol and SM/POPC/Chol and discuss effects on protein insertion and line tension.