Institute for Medicine and Engineering Papers
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of this Version
November 2004
Abstract
This study has investigated the effect of cellular cholesterol on membrane deformability of bovine aortic endothelial cells. Cellular cholesterol content was depleted by exposing the cells to methyl-ß-cyclodextrin or enriched by exposing the cells to methyl-ß-cyclodextrin saturated with cholesterol. Control cells were treated with methyl-ß-cyclodextrincholesterol at a molar ratio that had no effect on the level of cellular cholesterol. Mechanical properties of the cells with different cholesterol contents were compared by measuring the degree of membrane deformation in response to a step in negative pressure applied to the membrane by a micropipette. The experiments were performed on substrate-attached cells that maintained normal morphology. The data were analyzed using a standard linear elastic half-space model to calculate Young elastic modulus. Our observations show that, in contrast to the known effect of cholesterol on membrane stiffness of lipid bilayers, cholesterol depletion of bovine aortic endothelial cells resulted in a significant decrease in membrane deformability and a corresponding increase in the value of the elastic coefficient of the membrane, indicating that cholesterol-depleted cells are stiffer than control cells. Repleting the cells with cholesterol reversed the effect. An increase in cellular cholesterol to a level higher than that of normal cells, however, had no effect on the elastic properties of bovine aortic endothelial cells. We also show that although cholesterol depletion had no apparent effect on the intensity of F-actin-specific fluorescence, disrupting F-actin with latrunculin A abrogated the stiffening effect. We suggest that cholesterol depletion increases the stiffness of the membrane by altering the properties of the submembrane F-actin and/or its attachment to the membrane.
Date Posted: 30 July 2007
This document has been peer reviewed.
Comments
Reprinted from Biophysical Journal, Volume 87, Issue 5, November 2004, pages 3336-3343.
Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1529/biophysj.104.040634