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Much of our understanding of the physical properties of raft domains inbiological membranes, and some insight into the mechanisms underlying theirformation stem from atomistic simulations of simple model systems, especiallyternary mixtures consisting of saturated and unsaturated lipids, andcholesterol (Chol). To explore the properties of such systems at large spatialscales, we here present a simple ternary mixture lattice model, involving asmall number of nearest neighbor interaction terms. Monte Carlo simulations ofmixtures with different compositions show an excellent agreement withexperimental and atomistic simulation observations across multiple scale,ranging from the local distributions of lipids to the phase diagram of thesystem. The simplicity of the model allows us to identify the roles played bythe different interactions between components, and the interplay between them.Importantly, by changing the value of one of the model parameters, we can tunethe size of the liquid-ordered domains, thereby to simulate both Type IImixtures exhibiting macroscopic phase separation and Type I mixtures withnanoscopic domains. The Type II mixture simulation results fit well to theexperimentally-determined phase diagram of mixtures containing saturatedDPPC/unsaturated DOPC/Chol. When the tunable parameter is changed, we obtainthe Type I version of DPPC/DOPC/Chol, i.e., a mixture not showing thermodynamicphase transitions but one that may be fitted to the same phase diagram if localmeasures are used to distinguish between the different states. Our modelresults suggest that short range packing is likely to be a key regulator of thestability and size distribution of biological rafts.

A lattice model of ternary mixtures of lipids and cholesterol with tunable domain sizes