Effects of cholesterol on plasma membrane lipid order in MCF-7 cells by two-photon microscopy

Yixiu Zeng; Jianling Chen; Hongqin Yang; Yuhua Wang; Hui Li; Shusen Xie

doi:10.1117/12.2069100

17 September 2014 Effects of cholesterol on plasma membrane lipid order in MCF-7 cells by two-photon microscopy

Yixiu Zeng, Jianling Chen, Hongqin Yang, Yuhua Wang, Hui Li, Shusen Xie

Proceedings Volume 9230, Twelfth International Conference on Photonics and Imaging in Biology and Medicine (PIBM 2014); 92300V (2014) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2069100
Event: Twelfth International Conference on Photonics and Imaging in Biology and Medicine (PIBM 2014), 2014, Wuhan, China

Abstract

Lipid rafts are cholesterol- and glycosphingolipids- enriched microdomains on plasma membrane surface of mammal cells, involved in a variety of cellular processes. Depleting cholesterol from the plasma membrane by drugs influences the trafficking of lipid raft markers. Optical imaging techniques are powerful tools to study lipid rafts in live cells due to its noninvasive feature. In this study, breast cancer cells MCF-7 were treated with different concentrations of MβCD to deplete cholesterol and an environmentally sensitive fluorescence probe, Laurdan was loaded to image lipid order by two-photon microscopy. The generalized polarization (GP) values were calculated to distinguish the lipid order and disorder phase. GP images and GP distributions of native and cholesterol-depleted MCF-7 cells were obtained. Our results suggest that even at low concentration (0.5 mM) of MβCD, the morphology of the MCF-7 cells changes. Small high GP areas (lipid order phase) decrease more rapidly than low GP areas (lipid disorder phase), indicating that lipid raft structure was altered more severely than nonraft domains. The data demonstrates that cholesterol dramatically affect raft coverage and plasma membrane fluidity in living cells.

Citation Download Citation

Yixiu Zeng, Jianling Chen, Hongqin Yang, Yuhua Wang, Hui Li, and Shusen Xie "Effects of cholesterol on plasma membrane lipid order in MCF-7 cells by two-photon microscopy", Proc. SPIE 9230, Twelfth International Conference on Photonics and Imaging in Biology and Medicine (PIBM 2014), 92300V (17 September 2014); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2069100

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