Development of electron nano-diffraction for the study on membrane structures, Kinoshita Masanao, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B), Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B), Kyushu University, Apr. 2017, Mar. 2020, Ordered/disordered phase separation occurring in bio-membranes has attracted researchers' interests since the ordered domains, lipid rafts, are involved in important biological events. While the structure of the ordered domain has been examined with artificial membranes, the substructure inside the ordered domain is not unknown. Here, we examined the packing structure of the lipid carbon chains in the ordered domain using electron diffraction.
We first prepared the dehydrated monolayer samples, which maintain the chain packing structures as those in the aqueous suspension. We then optimized the electron flux to minimize beam damage and developed low-flux scanning electron diffraction (LFSED). Finally, we addressed the chain packing structure inside the ordered domain and found that the ordered domain contains multiple subdomains with different crystallographic axes. Moreover, the size of the subdomain is larger in the domain centre than that near the phase boundary., 17K15107