Cell Membrane Viscosity
NIST scientists have gained new insight into the movement of molecules that form the cell membrane (the boundary between the cell and its surroundings), particularly how their movements affect the membrane's viscosity, or resistance to flow. Here we see a closeup of the cell membrane with its lipid molecules' tails wiggling rapidly and one of the molecules changing position.
We now have a clearer picture of the lightning-fast molecular dance occurring within the membrane that encloses each cell in our body, revealed in part by neutron beams at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The findings may have applications in drug development, and they also address long-standing fundamental mysteries about why cell membranes move as they do.
The research, published today in Physical Review Letters, provides new insight into how the movements of the individual lipid molecules that form the membrane affect its overall properties — particularly its viscosity, or resistance to flow. Understanding these properties is important because the membrane — the boundary between the cell and its surroundings — holds the key to accessing its interior.
“We discovered the time scale at which the lipid molecules are moving, and we connected it with the membrane’s viscosity,” said Michihiro Nagao, a scientist at NIST and the University of Maryland who performed the work with his colleagues at the NIST Center for Neutron Research (NCNR). “We have evidence of where the viscosity comes from, and we also show that our tools can study it. We didn’t have an effective technique to explore it before, so it’s an important advance.”
While the membrane is a nominally solid barrier between the cell and its surroundings, the fatty lipid molecules that form ..
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