Transient Nanoscopic Phase Separation in Biological Lipid Membranes Resolved by Planar Plasmonic Antennas

Pamina Winkler (1) , Raju Regmi (2) , Valentin Flauraud (3) , Jürgen Brugger (3) , Hervé Rigneault (2) , Jérôme Wenger (2) , Maria F. Garcia-Parajo (1, 4)

1 ICFO - Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques [Castelldefels]
2 MOSAIC - MOSAIC
3 LMIS1-EPFL - Microsystems Laboratory
4 ICREA - Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats = Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies

Nanoscale membrane assemblies of sphingolipids, cholesterol and certain proteins, also known as lipid rafts, play a crucial role in facilitating a broad range of important cell functions. Whereas on living cell membranes lipid rafts have been postulated to have nanoscopic dimensions and being highly transient, the existence of a similar type of dynamic nanodomains in multicomponent lipid bilayers has been questioned. Here, we perform fluorescence correlation spectroscopy on planar plasmonic antenna arrays with different nanogap sizes to assess the dynamic nanoscale organization of mimetic biological membranes. Our approach takes advantage of the highly enhanced and confined excitation light provided by the nano-antennas

Mots clés: Optical nano-antennas; Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy; FCS diffusion laws; Biological membranes; Lipid rafts

Domaines: Biologie structurale [q-bio.BM]; Biophysique [physics.bio-ph]

Pamina Winkler, Raju Regmi, Valentin Flauraud, Jürgen Brugger, Hervé Rigneault, et al.. Transient Nanoscopic Phase Separation in Biological Lipid Membranes Resolved by Planar Plasmonic Antennas. ACS Nano, 2017, 11 (7), pp.7241-7250. ⟨10.1021/acsnano.7b03177⟩. ⟨hal-01598637⟩