N-pyrene dodecanoyl sulfatide as membrane probe: a study of glycolipid dynamic behavior in model membranes.

An N-linked pyrene-dodecanoyl sulfatide was employed to measure the ratio of excimer fluorescence to monomer fluorescence intensities (E/M). The E/M values provided information about both the dynamic behavior and the structural distribution of the labelled glycolipid in note dispersion of micellar sulfatides and multilamellar vesicles of different phospholipids. Most of the labelled sulfatide seems to be located in domains sequestered from the surrounding phospholipids still above the phase transition temperature of the vesicles. The glycolipids sequestered in these domain environments are less sensitive to the structural changes that the addition of cholesterol or Ca2+ can induce in the phospholipid regions during the phase transition.