Acyl chain asymmetry and polyunsaturation of brain phospholipids facilitate membrane vesiculation without leakage
- Université Côte d'Azur, France
Abstract
Phospholipid membranes form cellular barriers but need to be flexible enough to divide by fission. Phospholipids generally contain a saturated fatty acid (FA) at position sn1 whereas the sn2-FA is saturated, monounsaturated or polyunsaturated. Our understanding of the impact of phospholipid unsaturation on membrane flexibility and fission is fragmentary. Here, we provide a comprehensive view of the effects of the FA profile of phospholipids on membrane vesiculation by dynamin and endophilin. Coupled to simulations, this analysis indicates that: (i) phospholipids with two polyunsaturated FAs make membranes prone to vesiculation but highly permeable; (ii) asymmetric sn1-saturated-sn2-polyunsaturated phospholipids provide a tradeoff between efficient membrane vesiculation and low membrane permeability; (iii) When incorporated into phospholipids, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA; omega-3) makes membranes more deformable than arachidonic acid (omega-6). These results suggest an explanation for the abundance of sn1-saturated-sn2-DHA phospholipids in synaptic membranes and for the importance of the omega-6/omega-3 ratio on neuronal functions.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-11-LABX-0028-01)
- Bruno Antonny
European Commission (ERC advanced grant 268888)
- Bruno Antonny
Eusko Jaurlaritza (Post-doctoral fellowship)
- Marco M Manni
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2018, Manni et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 6,378
- views
-
- 835
- downloads
-
- 122
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Citations by DOI
-
- 122
- citations for umbrella DOI https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.34394
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Acyl chain asymmetry and polyunsaturation of brain phospholipids facilitate membrane vesiculation without leakage
eLife 7:e34394.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.34394
