Complex dynamics at the nanoscale in simple biomembranes

Nature is known to engineer complex compositional and dynamical platforms in biological membranes. Understanding this complex landscape requires techniques to simultaneously detect membrane re-organization and dynamics at the nanoscale. Using super-resolution stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy coupled with fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS), we reveal direct experimental evidence of dynamic heterogeneity at the nanoscale in binary phospholipid-cholesterol bilayers. Domain formation on the length scale of ~200–600 nm due to local cholesterol compositional heterogeneity is found to be more prominent at high cholesterol content giving rise to distinct intra-domain lipid dynamics. STED-FCS reveals unique dynamical crossover phenomena at length scales of ~100–150 nm within each of these macroscopic regions. The extent of dynamic heterogeneity due to intra-domain hindered lipid diffusion as reflected from the crossover length scale, is driven by cholesterol packing and organization, uniquely influenced by phospholipid type. These results on simple binary model bilayer systems provide novel insights into pathways leading to the emergence of complex nanodomain substructures with implications for a wide variety of membrane mediated cellular events.