

showed a DMSO-mediated enhancement of the permeability through the formation of water pores, both in atomistic, and coarse-grained MD simulations.Īlthough the MD studies mentioned above have already addressed this issue, there is an important actor that has been missing in all these studies: cholesterol (Chol). All these observations suggest an increase of the membrane permeability in the presence of DMSO that has been already confirmed by simulations. A similar behavior is reported in simulations of ceramide bilayers, where DMSO is shown to promote phase transition from gel to liquid crystalline phase.

Sum and de Pablo demonstrated that DMSO is preferentially placed below the headgroup of the membrane lipids.
#Dimethyl sulfide charge series#
These effects have been confirmed by means of Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations in a series of recent articles. Experimental studies devoted to the investigation of the specific changes of lipid in membranes in the presence of DMSO have revealed that this compound replaces water in the inner region of the lipid headgroup and causes an increase of area per lipid and a decrease of membrane thickness.
#Dimethyl sulfide charge skin#
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.ĭimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO, (CH 3) 2SO) is a small amphiphilic molecule that is traditionally used as a cryoprotectant, solvent for peptides in NMR studies, cell fusogen, and chemical penetration enhancer to deliver active molecules through the skin and into the cells. The work was also supported by grants from Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBACyT X132/08), Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (PIP 112-200801-01080/09), and Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología (SLO-AR 08/02/09). This work was supported by Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Institut Gustave Roussy and Université Paris-Sud XI and by the French National Agency for Research through the Intcell ANR-10-BLAN-916 and Memove ANR-11-BS01-006 grants. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.įunding: Financial support is provided by Secretaria de Estado de Investigación i Desarrollo through project BFU2010-21847-C02-02 and by Departament d’Universitats, Recerca i Sistemes de la Informació through project 200. Received: ApAccepted: JPublished: July 25, 2012Ĭopyright: © 2012 de Ménorval et al.

PLoS ONE 7(7):Įditor: Giorgio Colombo, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy At larger DMSO concentrations, permeabilization is larger, as even Yo-Pro-1 can enter the cells as predicted by the DMSO-induced membrane-destructuring effects described in the MD simulations.Ĭitation: de Ménorval M-A, Mir LM, Fernández ML, Reigada R (2012) Effects of Dimethyl Sulfoxide in Cholesterol-Containing Lipid Membranes: A Comparative Study of Experiments In Silico and with Cells. These two behaviors can be associated to the MD-predicted consequences of the effects of the DMSO at low and intermediate DMSO concentrations. The experimental results on cells in culture can be easily explained according to the three expected regimes: in the presence of low doses of DMSO, the membrane of the cells exhibits undulations but no permeability increase can be detected, while at intermediate DMSO concentrations cells are permeabilized to water and calcium but not to larger molecules as Yo-Pro-1. We also successfully explore the applicability of DMSO to promote plasma membrane permeability to water, calcium ions (Ca 2+) and Yo-Pro-1 iodide (Yo-Pro-1) in living cell membranes. We show here that these modes of action are also reproduced in the presence of cholesterol in the bilayer, and we provide a description at the atomic detail of the DMSO-mediated process of pore formation in cholesterol-containing lipid membranes. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations with single-component lipid bilayers predicted the existence of three regimes of action of DMSO: membrane loosening, pore formation and bilayer collapse. Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) has been known to enhance cell membrane permeability of drugs or DNA.
