Chapter 16: Caged Xenon in Phospholipid Membrane Environments

The main components of mammalian tissue, after water, are lipids. Both xenon (Xe) and cryptophane-A (CrA), which acts as a molecular host for Xe, preferentially embed into lipid environments. These environments generate a large chemical shift difference (∼10 ppm) of the Xe@CrA complex compared to it being in aqueous solution. In this chapter, we describe how membrane models can easily be prepared and demonstrate the detection of Xe@CrA complexes interacting with such membrane models using the selectivity of Hyper-CEST NMR. Additionally, we review how Hyper-CEST spectroscopy and MRI can be used to obtain information about the membrane’s constituents and their phase properties and compare the Hyper-CEST responses of membrane models to the ones of cells.