What is it about?
Sphingomyelin is a major component of nerve cell membranes. In our work we found that synthetic bilayers made of sphingomyelin exhibit long term memory. This feature was revealed as a hysteresis loop that is observed when a sphingomyelin bilayer is heated and cooled back and forth. The initial state in our membranes is transformed upon heating, but cooling back the membrane does not allow the initial state to be reached again.
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Why is it important?
Usually, hysteresis is rate dependent. Cooling the system slowly enough allows to recover the initial sate. But our study showed that initial states of the bilayer were not recovered even after cooling very slowly. This observation is unique in the study of synthetic bilayers, which usually exhibit a reversible thermal cycle.
Perspectives
The phenomenon of rate-independent hysteresis is usually related with durable memory, and is exploited in magnetic tapes and other storage devices. This opens avenues for the use of sphyngolipid bilayers in related memory devices. Interestingly, sphyngolipids are major components of nerve cells. Do nerve cells somehow exploit this rate independent hysteresis to store information...?,
Luis G, MacDowell
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
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This page is a summary of: Long-term memory in lipid assemblies: Rate-independent hysteresis in the ripple-to-liquid-disordered transition of sphingomyelin bilayers, The Journal of Chemical Physics, April 2025, American Institute of Physics,
DOI: 10.1063/5.0252051.
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