Comparative study of the lateral motion of extrinsic probes and anthracene-labelled constitutive phospholipids in the plasma membrane of Chinese hamster ovary cells.

9-(2-Anthryl)-nonanoic acid is a new photoactivatable fluorescent probe which has been designed for the study of the lateral diffusion and distribution of lipids in biological membranes by means of the anthracene photodimerization reaction. This anthracene fatty acid can be incorporated metabolically into the glycerophospholipids (phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylserine, phosphatidylinositol) of Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells in culture. The diffusion coefficient of intrinsic lipids in the plasma membrane of these eukaryotic cells can thus be measured using the fluorescence recovery after a photobleaching technique, since illumination of the fluorescent anthracene groups yields non-fluorescent photodimers. For the sake of comparison, the extrinsic lipophilic probes 5-(N-hexadecanoyl)-aminofluorescein, 12-(9-anthroyloxy)-stearic acid, 9-(2-anthryl)-nonanoic acid and a synthetic anthracene-phosphatidylcholine were also used to label the plasma membrane of CHO cells. The diffusion coefficients for the extrinsic and intrinsic probes ranged over 1 - 2 x 10(-9) cm2/s. Small but significant differences were observed between the various probes reflecting differences they exhibit in size and polarity. All the extrinsic probes were free to diffuse, with a mobile fraction close to 100%. In contrast, a fractional recovery of only 75% was observed for the intrinsic anthracene-labelled phospholipids, suggesting that the anthracene fatty acid was metabolically incorporated into membrane lipid regions which were inaccessible to the extrinsic probes.