Journal article
Trapping crystal nucleation of cholesterol monohydrate: Relevance to pathological crystallization
Crystalline nucleation of cholesterol at the air-water interface has been studied via grazing incidence x-ray diffraction using synchrotron radiation. The various stages of cholesterol molecular assembly from monolayer to three bilayers incorporating interleaving hydrogen-bonded water layers in a monoclinic cholesterol .
H2O phase, has been monitored and their structures characterized to near atomic resolution. Crystallographic evidence is presented that this multilayer phase is similar to that of a reported metastable cholesterol phase of undetermined structure obtained from bile before transformation to the triclinic phase of cholesterol .
H2O, the thermodynamically stable macroscopic form. According to grazing incidence x-ray diffraction measurements and crystallographic data, a transformation from the monoclinic film structure to a multilayer of the stable monohydrate phase involves, at least initially, an intralayer cholesterol rearrangement in a single-crystal-to-single-crystal transition.
The preferred nucleation of the monoclinic phase of cholesterol . H2O followed by transformation to the stable monohydrate phase may be associated with an energetically more stable cholesterol bilayer arrangement of the former and a more favorable hydrogen-bonding arrangement of the latter. The relevance of this nucleation process of cholesterol monohydrate to pathological crystallization of cholesterol from cell biomembranes is discussed.
Language: | English |
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Publisher: | Biophysical Society |
Year: | 2005 |
Pages: | 1809-1817 |
ISSN: | 05236800 , 00063495 and 15420086 |
Types: | Journal article |
DOI: | 10.1529/biophysj.104.044834 |