Lateral diffusion studied by pulsed field gradient NMR on oriented lipid membranes

This mini-review focuses on the utilization of pulsed magnetic field gradients to measure diffusional motion in systems of macroscopically oriented lipid bilayers. The NMR diffusion technique is proposed to have appreciable potential for future biophysical investigations in the field of membrane biology. Topics such as transport of molecules both across and in the plane of the membrane can be successfully studied, and the formation of lipid domains and their intrinsic dynamics can also be scrutinized. First, a short introduction to the NMR technique is given together with a brief discussion on methods of obtaining a good bilayer orientation. Then, a number of recent results on biophysical/biological membrane systems of great interest is presented, in which some unique conclusions on so-called 'raft membranes' are reached. It is shown for systems with large two-phase areas of liquid disordered and liquid ordered phases that lipid lateral diffusion is faster in the former phase and has a smaller apparent activation energy. Further, on the time-scale of the experiments (50-250 ms), exchange between the two phases is fast in the phospholipid-cholesterol-water ternary system, whereas it is slow in the sphingomyelin-dioleoylphosphatidylcholine-cholesterol-water quaternary system.