Scholars@Duke
Thomas James McIntosh

Thomas James McIntosh

Professor Emeritus of Cell Biology
Cell Biology
t.mcintosh@cellbio.duke.edu
Duke Box 3011, Durham, NC 27710
443 Sands Bldg, Durham, NC 27710

Featured Works

Lipopolysaccharides in bacterial membranes act like cholesterol in eukaryotic plasma membranes in providing protection against melittin-induced bilayer lysis.

Journal article Biochemistry · February 4, 2003 Featured Publication Melittin is a small, cationic peptide that, like many other antimicrobial peptides, lyses cell membranes by acting on their lipid bilayers. However, the sensitivity to antimicrobial peptides varies among cell types. We have performed direct binding and ves ... Full text Link to item Cite

Effects of natural and enantiomeric cholesterol on the thermotropic phase behavior and structure of egg sphingomyelin bilayer membranes.

Journal article Biophys J · February 2003 Featured Publication Phospholipids, sphingolipids, and sterols are the major lipid components of the plasma membranes of eukaryotic cells. Because these three lipid classes occur naturally as enantiomerically pure compounds, enantiospecific lipid-lipid and lipid-sterol interac ... Full text Link to item Cite

Synthesis and characterization of carbohydrate-based phospholipids.

Journal article J Am Chem Soc · May 29, 2002 Featured Publication Novel carbohydrate-based phospholipids containing two saturated C(12) (dilauroyl ribo-phosphocholine) (DLRPC), C(14) (dimyristoyl ribo-phosphocholine) (DMRPC), and C(20) (diarachadonyl ribo-phosphocholine) (DARPC) carboxylic acid chains were synthesized. T ... Full text Link to item Cite

Structure, composition, and peptide binding properties of detergent soluble bilayers and detergent resistant rafts.

Journal article Biophys J · March 2002 Featured Publication Lipid bilayers composed of unsaturated phosphatidylcholine (PC), sphingomyelin (SM), and cholesterol are thought to contain microdomains that have similar detergent insolubility characteristics as rafts isolated from cell plasma membranes. We chemically ch ... Full text Link to item Cite

The biological activity of a liposomal complete core lipopolysaccharide vaccine.

Journal article J Endotoxin Res · 2002 Featured Publication A vaccine that induces humoral immunity to lipopolysaccharide (LPS), while remaining non-pyrogenic should be beneficial, as high levels of antibodies against LPS are associated with a reduced risk of adverse outcome. However, pure LPS or bacteria expressin ... Link to item Cite

The energetics of binding of a signal peptide to lipid bilayers: the role of bilayer properties.

Journal article Biochem Soc Trans · August 2001 Featured Publication The interactions between a signal peptide and a variety of lipid bilayers have been studied with direct binding assays, CD and isothermal titration calorimetry. We find that the binding of this peptide is influenced by charges and dipoles located in the bi ... Full text Link to item Cite

Influence of lipid composition on physical properties and peg-mediated fusion of curved and uncurved model membrane vesicles: "nature's own" fusogenic lipid bilayer.

Journal article Biochemistry · April 10, 2001 Featured Publication Poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)-mediated fusion of phosphatidylcholine model membranes has been shown to mimic the protein-mediated biomembrane process [Lee, J., and Lentz, B. R. (1998) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 95, 9274-9279]. Unlike the simple model memb ... Full text Link to item Cite

The effect of ethanol on the phase transition temperature and the phase structure of monounsaturated phosphatidylcholines.

Journal article Biochim Biophys Acta · February 9, 2001 Featured Publication Previous studies from our laboratories have delineated the relationship between the acyl chain asymmetry of mixed-chain phosphatidylcholines, C(X):C(Y)PC, and the effect of ethanol concentration, [EtOH], on the main phase transition temperature, T(m), and ... Full text Link to item Cite

The lipopolysaccharide barrier: correlation of antibiotic susceptibility with antibiotic permeability and fluorescent probe binding kinetics.

Journal article Biochemistry · September 26, 2000 Featured Publication Lipopolysaccharide (LPS), the primary lipid on the surface of Gram-negative bacteria, is thought to act as a permeability barrier, making the outer membrane relatively impermeable to hydrophobic antibiotics, detergents, and host proteins. Mutations in the ... Full text Link to item Cite

Cholesterol modifies the short-range repulsive interactions between phosphatidylcholine membranes.

Journal article Biochemistry · January 10, 1989 Featured Publication Pressure versus distance relationships have been obtained for egg phosphatidylcholine bilayers containing a range of cholesterol concentrations. Water was removed from between adjacent bilayers by the application of osmotic pressures in the range of 0.4-26 ... Full text Link to item Cite

Hydration force and bilayer deformation: a reevaluation.

Journal article Biochemistry · July 15, 1986 Featured Publication The hydration repulsive force between lipid bilayers and the deformability of both gel and liquid-crystalline bilayers have been quantitated by an X-ray diffraction analysis of osmotically stressed liposomes. Both sampling theorem reconstructions and elect ... Full text Link to item Cite

Influence of cholesterol on water penetration into bilayers.

Journal article Science · April 2, 1982 Featured Publication X-ray diffraction and capacitance measurements have been used to calculate the depth to which water penetrates in fully hydrated bacterial phosphatidylethanolamine bilayers in the presence and absence of cholesterol. The data indicate that cholesterol decr ... Full text Link to item Cite