Lipidic cubic phases (LCPs) are used in areas ranging from membrane biology to drug delivery. Because some membrane proteins are notoriously unstable at room temperature, and available LCPs undergo transformation to lamellar phases at low temperatures, the development of stable low-temperature LCPs for biophysical studies of membrane proteins is called for. A family of synthetic lipids with designed cyclopropyl modifications in the hydrophobic chains was synthesised in order to study the relationship between lipid molecular structure and mesophase behaviour. These lipids show a unique liquid-crystalline behaviour at low temperatures, enabling the use of LCP crystallisation in conditions never explored before.1
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