Fluorescence  probes  are  useful  for  studying  aspects  of  membrane  phenomena.  They
are  used  to  study  vesicle  leakage  and  fusion,  for  example.  In  addition,  the  intrinsic   fluorescence  of    Trp  in  peptides  and  proteins   is  a  useful  indicator  of  the  degree  of binding  and  depth  of  burial  of   this  group  in  membranes.  Surface polarity  probes
for membranes  have  shown also  that  these  are  sensitive  to  changes  which  take  place
in  the membrane  just  below  the  bilayer  to  hexagonal  phase  transition  temperature.

References:

J. Sykora, P. Jurkiewicz, R.M. Epand, R Kraayenhof, M. Langner and M. Hof. 2005. Influence of the curvature on the water structure in the headgroup region of the phospholipid bilayer studied by the solvent relaxation technique.  Chem. Phys. Lipids,135(2):213-21.

R.M. Epand, P.Voung, C.M.Yip, S.Maekawa and R.F. Epand. 2004.Cholesterol-dependent partitioning of phosphatidylinositol(4,5)diphosphate into membrane domains by the amino terminal fragment of Nap-22. Biochemical J. ACCELERATED PUBLICATION, 379(Pt 3):527-32.

 
 


 
 
 
 

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