ArticleBiophysical journal2004
Cholesterol depletion increases membrane stiffness of aortic endothelial cells.
Article in Biophysical journal, 2004. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 102 papers.
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Who cites it
102 citing papers in PubMed, 241 citations in OpenAlex.
- OxLDL and substrate stiffness promote neutrophil transmigration by enhanced endothelial cell contractility and ICAM-1.Journal of biomechanics · 2012Trial
- Cholesterol-Lowering Treatment Blocks Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT) Associated Invasiveness and Drug Resistance in Breast and Colorectal Adenocarcinoma Models.Cancer medicine · 2026Article
- Article
- Cholesterol Depletion with U18666A and Methyl-β Cyclodextrin Increased Small Molecule Permeability Across Brain Microvascular Endothelial Cells.Annals of biomedical engineering · 2025Article
- Mechanoregulation of lymphocyte cytotoxicity.Nature reviews. Immunology · 2025Review
- Targeting cancer cell stiffness and metastasis with clinical therapeutics.Clinical & experimental metastasis · 2025Review
- The drug resistance feature of acute myeloid leukemia is related to the cell stiffness.Biophysics reviews · 2025Article
- Biomechanics in the tumor microenvironment: from biological functions to potential clinical applications.Experimental hematology & oncology · 2025Review
- Involvement of Lipids and Lipid Mediators in Inflammation and Atherogenesis.Current medicinal chemistry · 2025Review
- How sterols affect protoplasts plasma membrane water permeability and their volume under osmotic shock.Journal of plant research · 2025Article
- Peptide-Induced Division of Polymersomes for Biomimetic Compartmentalization.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2024Article
- Cancer cell stiffening via CoQNature communications · 2024Article
- Shi-pi-xiao-ji formula suppresses hepatocellular carcinoma by reducing cellular stiffness through upregulation of acetyl-coA acetyltransferase 1.World journal of gastrointestinal oncology · 2024Article
- Paradoxes: Cholesterol and Hypoxia in Preeclampsia.Biomolecules · 2024Review
- FLVCR1a Controls Cellular Cholesterol Levels through the Regulation of Heme Biosynthesis and Tricarboxylic Acid Cycle Flux in Endothelial Cells.Biomolecules · 2024Article
- Comparative Tensile Properties and Collagen Patterns in Domestic Cat (Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Membrane Cholesterol Interactions with Proteins in Hypercholesterolemia-Induced Endothelial Dysfunction.Current atherosclerosis reports · 2023Review
- Chromogranin A and its derived peptides: potential regulators of cholesterol homeostasis.Cellular and molecular life sciences : CMLS · 2023Review
- DNA methyltransferase 1 deficiency improves macrophage motility and wound healing by ameliorating cholesterol accumulation.NPJ Regenerative medicine · 2023Article
- Extracellular vesicle-matrix interactions.Nature reviews. Materials · 2023Article
42 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
This study has investigated the effect of cellular cholesterol on membrane deformability of bovine aortic endothelial cells. Cellular cholesterol content was depleted by exposing the cells to methyl-beta-cyclodextrin or enriched by exposing the cells to methyl-beta-cyclodextrin saturated with cholesterol. Control cells were treated with methyl-beta-cyclodextrin-cholesterol at a molar ratio that had no effect on the level of cellular cholesterol. Mechanical properties of the cells with different cholesterol contents were compared by measuring the degree of membrane deformation in response to a step in negative pressure applied to the membrane by a micropipette. The experiments were performed on substrate-attached cells that maintained normal morphology. The data were analyzed using a standard linear elastic half-space model to calculate Young elastic modulus. Our observations show that, in contrast to the known effect of cholesterol on membrane stiffness of lipid bilayers, cholesterol depletion of bovine aortic endothelial cells resulted in a significant decrease in membrane deformability and a corresponding increase in the value of the elastic coefficient of the membrane, indicating that cholesterol-depleted cells are stiffer than control cells. Repleting the cells with cholesterol reversed the effect. An increase in cellular cholesterol to a level higher than that of normal cells, however, had no effect on the elastic properties of bovine aortic endothelial cells. We also show that although cholesterol depletion had no apparent effect on the intensity of F-actin-specific fluorescence, disrupting F-actin with latrunculin A abrogated the stiffening effect. We suggest that cholesterol depletion increases the stiffness of the membrane by altering the properties of the submembrane F-actin and/or its attachment to the membrane.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.