High heterogeneity of plasma membrane microfluidity in multidrug-resistant cancer cells.

Diffusion-time distribution analysis (DDA) has been used to explore the plasma membrane fluidity of multidrug-resistant cancer cells (LR73 carcinoma cells) and also to characterize the influence of various membrane agents present in the extracellular medium. DDA is a recent single-molecule technique, based on fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS), well suited to retrieve local organization of cell membrane. The method was conducted on a large number of living cells, which enabled us to get a detailed overview of plasma membrane microviscosity, and plasma membrane micro-organization, between the cells of the same line. Thus, we clearly reveal the higher heterogeneity of plasma membrane in multidrug-resistant cancer cells in comparison with the nonresistant ones (denoted sensitive cells). We also display distinct modifications related to a membrane fluidity modulator, benzyl alcohol, and two revertants of multidrug resistance, verapamil and cyclosporin-A. A relation between the distribution of the diffusion-time values and the modification of membrane lateral heterogeneities is proposed.