Korea University: Unveiling the Secrets of Brain Cell Membrane- Non-permeation of water molecules observed across high-cholesterol content cell membrane
The joint research group, led by Professor Ryu Yong-Sang of the Brain Research Institute in the KU-KIST Graduate School of Converging Science and Technology at KU and Professor Ahn Dong June of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at KU experimentally observed, for the first time in the world, the failure of water molecules to permeate a cholesterol-containing lipid raft domain, which is known to exist in brain cells. The group also conducted a theoretical study to investigate the mechanism.
The results were published online on November 11, 2022 as a cover article in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (IF=16.383), which is the top journal in the field of chemistry.
The present study is the first case where the lipid rafter, which is known to exist in the brain cells in a large amount, was realized in vitro, and the impermeability of water molecules was shown experimentally. Many attempts have been made to investigate whether water molecules migrate in the lipid raft, which is a domain featuring high cholesterol content, but the experimental demonstration of a lipid raft has been left unsolved. This was a challenging task in terms of time and space, because a high cholesterol lipid raft exists for only 1/The research group invented a technology for stably reproducing a lipid raft, which exists locally for a very short time. They coated the lipid raft on a microscale hole structure. The newly designed lipid raft support-type platform was devised to simulate the impermeability of water molecules in vitro. Based on the principle that the cell membrane bursts when an exchange of water molecules occurs actively, the platform enabled the researchers to analyze the permeability of water molecules in the lipid raft.
Furthermore, they performed a molecular dynamics simulation to investigate the process by which water molecule permeability is decreased in the cholesterol-rich lipid raft domain, and successfully demonstrated the process by which the membrane is broken when water molecule exchange occurs actively.
1000 second on the cell membrane and even if it is generated again, the thickness is just 1/10,000 of a hair.