Tracking Cholesterol Flip-Flop in Mammalian Plasma Membrane through Coarse-Grained Molecular Dynamics Simulations

Plasma membrane (PM) simulations at longer length and time scales at nearly atomistic resolution can provide invaluable insights into cell signaling, apoptosis, lipid trafficking, and lipid raft formation. We propose a coarse-grained (CG) model of a mammalian PM considering major lipid head groups distributed asymmetrically across the membrane bilayer and validate the model against bilayer structural properties from atomistic simulation. Using the proposed CG model, we identify a recurring pattern in the passive collective cholesterol transbilayer motion and study the individual cholesterol flip-flop events and associated pathways along with lateral ordering in the bilayer during a flip-flop event. We identify two discrete cholesterol flip-flop pathways: (i) a systematic rototranslational pathway and (ii) intraleaflet inversion followed by interleaflet translation (or reverse). We observe a periodic cholesterol enrichment in the exoplasmic leaflet of the PM bilayer and examine the underlying cholesterol–lipid affinities. We observe closer association between cholesterol and palmitoylsphingomyelin (PSM) lipid, relative to other lipids, and conclude that the cholesterol enrichment in the exoplasmic leaflet can be attributed to higher PSM content in that leaflet, together leading to formation of short-lived PSM–cholesterol-rich domains.