Cholesterol monolayers, penetration

Fig. IV 23. Penetration of cholesterol monolayers by CTAB (hexadecyl-trimethylam-monium bromide. [From D. M. Alexander, G. T. Barnes, M. A. McGregor, and K. Walker, Phenomena in Mixed Surfactant Systems, in J. F. Scamehom, ed., ACS Symposium Series 311, p. 133, 1986 (Ref. 269). Copyright 1986, American Chemical Society.]...

Evidence from studies on the penetration of cholesterol monolayers by nonionic surfactants of two Brij series suggests penetration occurs at extremely low concentrations (22), the C] 2 compounds interacting at lower concentrations than C] 0 compounds. (Figure 7). 

When a surfactant is injected into the liquid beneath an insoluble monolayer, surfactant molecules may adsorb at the surface, penetrating between the monolayer molecules. However it is difficult to determine the extent of this penetration. In principle, equilibrium penetration is described by the Gibbs equation, but the practical application of this equation is complicated by the need to evaluate the dependence of the activity of monolayer substance on surface pressure. There have been several approaches to this problem. In this paper, previously published surface pressure-area Isotherms for cholesterol monolayers on solutions of hexadecy1-trimethyl-ammonium bromide have been analysed by three different methods and the results compared. For this system there is no significant difference between the adsorption calculated by the equation of Pethica and that from the procedure of Alexander and Barnes, but analysis by the method of Motomura, et al. gives results which differ considerably. These differences indicate that an independent experimental measurement of the adsorption should be capable of discriminating between the Motomura method and the other two. 

For interpreting thesedata, and as a first step towards formulating a model for monolayer penetration, it is clearly desirable to calculate the amount of surfactant that has penetrated the monolayer. This has proved to be a difficult theoretical problem, but in recent years some limited solutions and a general solution have been found. In this paper we examine data for the penetration of cholesterol monolayers by hexadecy1-trimethyl-ammonium bromide (CTAB) (7) and compare the penetration or adsorption values calculated from the different treatments. 

Numerical data are available from our earlier penetration work for a number of monolayer/surfactant systems. The simplest of these systems was selected for this initial analysis the penetration of cholesterol monolayers by hexadecyl-trimethyl-ammonium bromide (CTAB) J). Cholesterol monolayers at 298 K exhibit a single, highly incompressible, condensed phase with the transition to a gaseous phase occurring at a negligibly low surface pressure. CTAB does not appear to undergo surface hydrolysis (10) and the gaseous-to-expanded phase transition occurs at a low concentration (0.043 mmol kg ) and a low surface pressure (1.0 mN m l). 

FIG. 1. Penetration of cholesterol monolayers by CTAB calculated by the equation of Pethlca and the procedure of Alexander and Barnes. 

Comparison of different procedures for calculating the penetration of cholesterol monolayers by CTAB closed points, Pethica and Alexander and Barnes open points, Motomura et dl. 

Although glycosphingolipids are the specific lipid components in the antigen-antibody complex, their activity is markedly enhanced by other (auxiliary) lipids such as lecithin and lecithin-cholesterol mixtures (15). The present study deals with the effect of lipid composition on the penetration of lactoside—cholesterol and lactoside—lecithin monolayers by rabbit y-globulin. We also investigated the lecithin-cholesterol system. Furthemore, since criteria for the existence of lipid-lipid complexes in monolayers are still few (8, 17), we have used infrared spectroscopy to examine lipid mixtures for the presence of complexes. 

For simplicity of calculation, the core was assumed to contain all of the triglyceride and cholesteryl ester, although it is known that small amounts of the core lipids are dissolved in the surface monolayer, where they represent about 3 mol% of the surface lipids, and a larger fraction, about one ninth of the cholesterol, is dissolved in the core (Miller and Small, 1987). The presence of core lipids in the lipoprotein surface is very important metabolically, for the lipases and transfer proteins have access to these core lipids without having to penetrate the surface monolayer. For the calculation of composition, density, and size, however, the effects of component transfer between surface and core affect these quantities about one part in the fourth significant figure, and have been neglected in Table II. 

Ten mole percent cholesterol in the PC monolayer suppresses the second penetration step, while 25 mol% suppresses both steps. This may be explained by the cholesterol molecules rigidifying the lipid monolayer, thereby preventing it from associating with some penetrating domains of apoA-I. 

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