ArticleBiophysical journal2013
Liquid general anesthetics lower critical temperatures in plasma membrane vesicles.
Article in Biophysical journal, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 65 papers.
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Who cites it
65 citing papers in PubMed, 119 citations in OpenAlex.
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- PROTEIN-PROTEIN INTERACTION NETWORKS CAN BE HIGHLY SENSITIVE TO THE MEMBRANE PHASE TRANSITION.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Protein-protein interaction networks can be highly sensitive to the membrane phase transition.ArXiv · 2025Article
- Membrane order regulates clathrin-coated pit dynamics but not initiation.Molecular biology of the cell · 2025Article
- Markov models and long-term memory in ion channels: A contradiction in terms?Biophysical journal · 2025Article
- Molecules in the Serotonin-Melatonin Synthesis Pathway Have Distinct Interactions with Lipid Membranes.The journal of physical chemistry. B · 2025Article
- Toward the Evolutionary Optimisation of Small Molecules Within Coarse-Grained Simulations: Training Molecules to Hide Behind Lipid Head Groups.The journal of physical chemistry. B · 2025Article
- Biomimetic Lipid Raft: Domain Stability and Interaction with Physiologically Active Molecules.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2024Review
- Lateral membrane organization as target of an antimicrobial peptidomimetic compound.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Features and mechanisms of propofol-induced protein kinase C (PKC) translocation and activation in living cells.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2023Article
- Effect of Local Anesthetics on Dipole Potential of Different Phase Membranes: A Fluorescence Study.The Journal of membrane biology · 2022Article
- Heptanol-mediated phase separation determines phase preference of molecules in live cell membranes.Journal of lipid research · 2022Article
- High-Content Imaging Platform to Discover Chemical Modulators of Plasma Membrane Rafts.ACS central science · 2022Article
- Alteration of lipid bilayer mechanics by volatile anesthetics: Insights from μs-long molecular dynamics simulations.iScience · 2022Article
- Surface densities prewet a near-critical membrane.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Article
- Critical Phenomena in Plasma Membrane Organization and Function.Annual review of physical chemistry · 2021Review
- Lateral heterogeneity and domain formation in cellular membranes.Chemistry and physics of lipids · 2020Article
- Direct label-free imaging of nanodomains in biomimetic and biological membranes by cryogenic electron microscopy.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
5 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
A large and diverse array of small hydrophobic molecules induce general anesthesia. Their efficacy as anesthetics has been shown to correlate both with their affinity for a hydrophobic environment and with their potency in inhibiting certain ligand-gated ion channels. In this study we explore the effects that n-alcohols and other liquid anesthetics have on the two-dimensional miscibility critical point observed in cell-derived giant plasma membrane vesicles (GPMVs). We show that anesthetics depress the critical temperature (Tc) of these GPMVs without strongly altering the ratio of the two liquid phases found below Tc. The magnitude of this affect is consistent across n-alcohols when their concentration is rescaled by the median anesthetic concentration (AC50) for tadpole anesthesia, but not when plotted against the overall concentration in solution. At AC50 we see a 4°C downward shift in Tc, much larger than is typically seen in the main chain transition at these anesthetic concentrations. GPMV miscibility critical temperatures are also lowered to a similar extent by propofol, phenylethanol, and isopropanol when added at anesthetic concentrations, but not by tetradecanol or 2,6 diterbutylphenol, two structural analogs of general anesthetics that are hydrophobic but have no anesthetic potency. We propose that liquid general anesthetics provide an experimental tool for lowering critical temperatures in plasma membranes of intact cells, which we predict will reduce lipid-mediated heterogeneity in a way that is complimentary to increasing or decreasing cholesterol. Also, several possible implications of our results are discussed in the context of current models of anesthetic action on ligand-gated ion channels.
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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.