Films of Other Biological Substances

There is quite a large body of literature on films of biological substances and related model compounds, much of it made possible by the sophisticated microscopic techniques discussed in Section IV-3E. There is considerable interest in biomembranes and how they can be modeled by lipid monolayers [35]. In this section we briefly discuss lipid monolayers, lipolytic enzyme reactions, and model systems for studies of biological recognition. The related subjects of membranes and vesicles are covered in the following section. 

An essential component of cell membranes are the lipids, lecithins, or phosphatidylcholines (PC). The typical ir-a behavior shown in Fig. XV-6 is similar to that for the simple fatty-acid monolayers (see Fig. IV-16) and has been modeled theoretically [36]. Branched hydrocarbons tails tend to expand the mono-layer [38], but generally the phase behavior is described by a fluid-gel transition at the plateau [39] and a semicrystalline phase at low a. As illustrated in Fig. XV-7, the areas of the dense phase may initially be highly branched, but they anneal to a circular shape on recompression [40]. The theoretical evaluation of these shape transitions is discussed in Section IV-4F. 

A study by Bames and co-workers of the equilibrium spreading behavior of dimyristol phosphatidylcholine (DMPC) reconciles the differences between spreading of bulk solids and dispersions of liposomes [41]. This study shows the formation of multibilayers below the monolayer at the air-water interface. An incipient phase separation, undetectable by microscopy, in DMPC-cholesterol 

Remarkable chiral patterns, such as those in Figs. IV-15 and XV-8, are found in mixtures of cholesterol and 5-dipalmitoyl PC (DPPC) on compression to the plateau region (as in Fig. XV-6). As discussed in Section IV-4F, this behavior has been modeled in terms of an anisotropic line tension arising from molecular symmetry [46-49]. 

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