Effect of cholesterol on interaction of dibucaine with phospholipid vesicles: a fluorescence study

Multidimensional approaches in LC and MS for phospholipid bioanalysis

The advancement of both LC and MS has contributed significantly to phospholipid analysis. Two major trends of developments have emerged in the past decade: application of dedicated online (or offline) LC–MS techniques including 2D and sophisticated chromatographic separations, and the development of so-called shotgun lipidomics represented by multidimensional MS-based techniques. However, neither of these techniques have been shown to be a universal solution for the increasing demand on the comprehensive information of lipid metabolomics in lipidomics studies. This is partially due to the intrinsic complexity of naturally occurring phospholipids in practice. It is evident that either chromatography or MS has to go multidimensional in order to fulfil this goal. This review focuses on recent developments of multidimensional MS, LC–MS and chromatographic approaches for lipidomics analysis. The perspectives and retrospectives of chromatography and MS in these aspects will be reviewed and discussed.

Local anesthetics facilitate ion transport across lipid planar bilayer membranes under an electric field: Dependence on type of lipid bilayer

In order to elucidate the role of structural change of lipid membrane bilayer in the mode of action of local anesthetic, we studied the effects of local anesthetics, charged tetracaine and uncharged benzocaine, on ion permeability across various lipid planar bilayers (PC, mixed PC/PS (4/1, mol/mol); mixed PC/PE (1/1, mol/mol); mixed PC/SM (4/1, mol/mol)) under a constant applied voltage. The membrane conductances increased in the order of PC<<PC/PS<or=PC/SM<<PC/PE. When the constant voltage of -100 or -70 mV was applied through the lipid bilayer membranes in the presence of positively charged tetracaine, the fluctuating current pulses with the large amplitude generated, but not appeared in the absence of tetracaine. The addition of uncharged benzocaine generated the fluctuating currents with the small amplitude. Both charged tetracaine and uncharged benzocaine facilitated electrophoretically the transport of small ions such as KCl in the buffer solution through the fluctuating pores in the lipid bilayer membranes formed by interaction with the local anesthetic under the negative applied membrane potential. The current pulses also contained actual transport of charged tetracaine together with the transport of the small ions. The amplitude and the duration time of the electrical current generated by adding the local anesthetics were dependent on the type of the lipid, the applied voltage and its voltage polarity.

Effect of the glycosphingolipid, GM1 on localization of dibucaine in phospholipid vesicles: a fluorescence study

Interaction of the local anesthetic dibucaine with small unilamellar vesicles of dimyristoylphosphatidylcholine (DMPC) and dioleoylphosphatidylcholine (DOPC) containing different mole percents of monosialoganglioside (GM1) has been studied by fluorescence spectroscopy. Fluorescence measurements on dibucaine in the presence of phospholipid vesicles containing various amounts of GM1 yielded a pattern of variation of wavelength at emission maximum and steady-state anisotropy which indicated that the microenvironment of dibucaine is more hydrophobic and rigid in membranes that contain GM1 than in membranes without it. Experiments on quenching of fluorescence from membrane-associated dibucaine by potassium iodide showed reduced quenching efficiency with the increase in GM1 content of the vesicles, demonstrating lesser accessibility of the iodide quenchers to dibucaine in the presence of GM1, when compared to that in its absence. Total emission intensity decay profiles of dibucaine yielded two lifetime components of approximately 1 and approximately 2.8-3.1 ns with mean relative contributions of approximately 25 and approximately 75%, respectively. The mean lifetime in vesicles was 20-30% lower than in the aqueous medium and showed a definite increase in presence of GM1 from that in the absence of it. All the spectral properties point that dibucaine encountered regions of membrane containing significant amount of GM1 and penetrated deeper in hydrophobic core of the bilayer.

The tertiary amine local anesthetic dibucaine binds to the membrane skeletal protein spectrin

The quinoline-based tertiary amine dibucaine has been shown to bind the membrane skeletal protein spectrin with a dissociation constant of 3.5x10(-5) M at 25 degrees C. Such binding is detected by monitoring the quenching of the tryptophan fluorescence intensity with increasing concentrations of dibucaine only and not with the benzene-based local anesthetics procaine, tetracaine and lidocaine. Binding of dibucaine also indicated changes in the tertiary structure of spectrin indicated by a circular dichroism spectrum in the near-UV region due to absorption of the aromatic side chains. The thermodynamic parameters associated with the binding indicated the interaction of dibucaine and spectrin to be enthalpy-driven and insensitive to an increase in the ionic strength of the buffer.