Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33953656›Full record

ArticleJournal of applied crystallography2021

The effect of polydispersity, shape fluctuations and curvature on small unilamellar vesicle small-angle X-ray scattering curves.

Veronica Chappa, Yuliya Smirnova, Karlo Komorowski, Marcus Müller, Tim Salditt

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Journal of applied crystallography, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
5citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

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Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

5 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Sterols in plant biologyCell surface (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2025
    Review
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors.

Veronica ChappaFaculty of Physics, University of Göttingen, Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1, Göttingen 37077, Germany.
Yuliya SmirnovaFaculty of Physics, University of Göttingen, Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1, Göttingen 37077, Germany.
Karlo KomorowskiFaculty of Physics, University of Göttingen, Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1, Göttingen 37077, Germany.
Marcus MüllerFaculty of Physics, University of Göttingen, Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1, Göttingen 37077, Germany.
Tim SaldittFaculty of Physics, University of Göttingen, Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1, Göttingen 37077, Germany.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4636-0813

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Small unilamellar vesicles (20-100 nm diameter) are model systems for strongly curved lipid membranes, in particular for cell organelles. Routinely, small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) is employed to study their size and electron-density profile (EDP). Current SAXS analysis of small unilamellar vesicles (SUVs) often employs a factorization into the structure factor (vesicle shape) and the form factor (lipid bilayer electron-density profile) and invokes additional idealizations: (i) an effective polydispersity distribution of vesicle radii, (ii) a spherical vesicle shape and (iii) an approximate account of membrane asymmetry, a feature particularly relevant for strongly curved membranes. These idealizations do not account for thermal shape fluctuations and also break down for strong salt- or protein-induced deformations, as well as vesicle adhesion and fusion, which complicate the analysis of the lipid bilayer structure. Presented here are simulations of SAXS curves of SUVs with experimentally relevant size, shape and EDPs of the curved bilayer, inferred from coarse-grained simulations and elasticity considerations, to quantify the effects of size polydispersity, thermal fluctuations of the SUV shape and membrane asymmetry. It is observed that the factorization approximation of the scattering intensity holds even for small vesicle radii (∼30 nm). However, the simulations show that, for very small vesicles, a curvature-induced asymmetry arises in the EDP, with sizeable effects on the SAXS curve. It is also demonstrated that thermal fluctuations in shape and the size polydispersity have distinguishable signatures in the SAXS intensity. Polydispersity gives rise to low-

Indexed as

coarse-grained simulationselastic simulationsSAXS curvessmall-angle X-ray scatteringsmall unilamellar vesicles

Identifiers

PMID33953656
PMCPMC8056763

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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.