Paper published about Nucleation in Phase-Separating Lipid Bilayers

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Our paper on “Nucleation of symmetric domains in the coupled leaflets of a bilayer” (PDO and John Williamson) was published in Soft Matter in November 2015. In it we show how nucleation of symmetric domains in lipid bilayers arises out of an initial phase separation into anti-registered domains. Antiregistration, while not usually seen in phase separation with large domains, can be expected to be more stable for small-scale patterns during the early stages of spinodal decomposition in phase-separating lipid bilayers, because of the cost of hydrophobic mismatch in having adjacent different thickness material.

Here, SS represents a lipid bilayer in which both leaflets have the same “S” state (e.g. rich in saturated lipids), while in a UU bilayer both leaflets have “U” states (e.g. rich in unsaturated lipids). UU and SS bilayers are registered, while in anti-registered bilayers US and SU the leaflets have different phases. For particular parameters the initial instability towards phase separation leads to anti-registered states US and SU, which can either lead to nucleation of conventional registered phases (a), or remain metastable as in (b)