Recombination between C and H to Form Acetylide (CH) Probes Nanoscale Interactions in Lipid Bilayers via Dynamic Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry: Cholesterol and GM Clustering.

Although it is thought that there is lateral heterogeneity of lipid and protein components within biological membranes, probing this heterogeneity has proven challenging. The difficulty in such experiments is due to both the small length scale over which such heterogeneity can occur, and the significant perturbation resulting from fluorescent or spin labeling on the delicate interactions within bilayers. Atomic recombination during dynamic nanoscale secondary ion imaging mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS) is a non-perturbative method for examining nanoscale bilayer interactions. Atomic recombination is a variation on conventional NanoSIMS imaging, whereby an isotope on one molecule combines with a different isotope on another molecule during the ionization process, forming an isotopically enriched polyatomic ion in a distance-dependent manner. We show that the recombinant ion, CH, is formed in high yield from C- and H-labeled lipids. The low natural abundance of triply labeled acetylide also makes it an ideal ion to probe GM clusters in model membranes and the effects of cholesterol on lipid-lipid interactions. We find evidence supporting the cholesterol condensation effect as well as the presence of nanoscale GM clusters in model membranes.