Shift in membrane miscibility transition temperature upon addition of short-chain alcohols

I consider the effect of a small concentration of a molecule, such as a short-chain alcohol, on the miscibility transition temperature of a giant plasma membrane vesicle. For concentrations sufficiently small such that the system can be treated as a dilute solution, the change in transition temperature is known to depend upon the extent of the molecule's partition into the coexisting liquid-disordered and liquid-ordered phases. Preferential partitioning into the former decreases the miscibility temperature, while preferential partitioning into the latter causes an increase. The analysis, combined with calculated values of the partition coefficient of saturated chains, illuminates the results of recent experiments on the change in miscibility transition temperatures with changing alcohol chain length, and makes several testable predictions.

Figure 1

Partition coefficient, $X^{lo}/X^{ld}$, for several kinds of single chains of length $n$. $C_n:0$ denotes a chain of length $n$ and no double bonds. From Ref. [8].