| A current popular view in cell biology is that sub-micron, dynamic heterogeneity in lipid and protein composition arises within the plasma membranes of resting cells. Local changes in membrane composition may affect protein activity, which is sensitive to the lipid environment. We have observed dynamic heterogeneity in lipid membranes in the form of composition fluctuations near a miscibility critical point. In this thesis we quantitatively describe the dynamic and static properties of these fluctuations. We evaluate the temperature dependence of line tension between liquid domains and of fluctuation correlation lengths in lipid membranes in order to extract a critical exponent, nu. We obtain nu = 1.2 +/- 0.2, consistent with the Ising model prediction nu = 1. From probability distributions of pixel intensities in fluorescence images of membranes, we also extract an independent critical exponent of beta = 0.124 +/- 0.03, which is consistent with the Ising prediction of beta = 1/8. We have systematically measured the effective dynamic critical exponent z eff in a lipid membrane while cooling the system toward a critical point. We observe that zeff slightly increases from a value of roughly 2.6 as xi → 0, to zeff = 3.0 +/- 0.15 at xi = 13 sm. Our measurements are consistent with the prediction that zeff → 3.00 as T → Tc for a 2-D system with conserved order parameter in contact with a bulk 3-D liquid. To our knowledge, no other systematic measurement of zeff with increasing xi exists for a 2-D system with conserved order parameter. We also report the solubility limit of several biologically relevant sterols in electroformed giant unilamellar vesicle membranes containing phosphatidylcholine (PC) lipids in ratios of 1:1:X DPPC:DOPC:sterol. We find solubility limits of cholesterol, lanosterol, ergosterol, stigmasterol, and beta-sitosterol using nuclear magnetic resonance. |
