Interface lipid

Evans RW, Williams MA, Tinoco J (1980) Surface viscosities of phospholipids alone and with cholesterol in monolayers at the air-water interface. Lipids 15 524-533... 

SERS has been employed to monitor incorporation of some molecules, such as medicament pirambicin (Heywang et al. 1996) or photosensitizer hypericin (Lajos et al. 2009) inside the membranes. In order to interface lipid bilayers with solid substrates, many groups employ tethered lipid bilayers. In these systems, a lipid... 

As has been noted, much of the interest in hlms of proteins, steroids, lipids, and so on, has a biological background. While studies at the air-water interface have been instructive, the natural systems approximate more closely to a water-oil interface. A fair amount of work has therefore been reported for such interfaces in spite of the greater experimental difhculties. 

While the v-a plots for ionized monolayers often show no distinguishing features, it is entirely possible for such to be present and, in fact, for actual phase transitions to be observed. This was the case for films of poly(4-vinylpyri-dinium) bromide at the air-aqueous electrolyte interface [118]. In addition, electrostatic interactions play a large role in the stabilization of solid-supported lipid monolayers [119] as well as in the interactions between bilayers [120]. 

Anotlier metliod applicable to interfaces is tlie detennination of tlie partial molecular area (7 of a biopolynier partitioning into a lipid monolayer at tlie water-air interface using tlie Langmuir trough [28]. The first step is to record a series of pressure 71-area (A) isotlienns witli different amounts of an amphiphilic biopolynier spread at tlie interface. 

Schwarz G 1996 Peptides at lipid bilayers and at the air/water interface Ber. Bunsenges. Rhys. Chem. 100 999-1003... 

Lipid bilayer (Section 26 4) Arrangement of two layers of phospholipids that constitutes cell membranes The polar termini are located at the inner and outer membrane-water interfaces and the lipophilic hydrocarbon tails cluster on the inside... 

Simple considerations show that the membrane potential cannot be treated with computer simulations, and continuum electrostatic methods may constimte the only practical approach to address such questions. The capacitance of a typical lipid membrane is on the order of 1 j.F/cm-, which corresponds to a thickness of approximately 25 A and a dielectric constant of 2 for the hydrophobic core of a bilayer. In the presence of a membrane potential the bulk solution remains electrically neutral and a small charge imbalance is distributed in the neighborhood of the interfaces. The membrane potential arises from... 

These are molecules which contain both hydrophilic and hydrophobic units (usually one or several hydrocarbon chains), such that they love and hate water at the same time. Familiar examples are lipids and alcohols. The effect of amphiphiles on interfaces between water and nonpolar phases can be quite dramatic. For example, tiny additions of good amphiphiles reduce the interfacial tension by several orders of magnitude. Amphiphiles are thus very efficient in promoting the dispersion of organic fluids in water and vice versa. Added in larger amounts, they associate into a variety of structures, filhng the material with internal interfaces which shield the oil molecules—or in the absence of oil the hydrophobic parts of the amphiphiles—from the water [3]. Some of the possible structures are depicted in Fig. 1. A very rich phase... 

Another interesting class of phase transitions is that of internal transitions within amphiphilic monolayers or bilayers. In particular, monolayers of amphiphiles at the air/water interface (Langmuir monolayers) have been intensively studied in the past as experimentally fairly accessible model systems [16,17]. A schematic phase diagram for long chain fatty acids, alcohols, or lipids is shown in Fig. 4. On increasing the area per molecule, one observes two distinct coexistence regions between fluid phases a transition from a highly diluted, gas -like phase into a more condensed liquid expanded phase, and a second transition into an even denser... 

Amphipathic lipids spontaneously form a variety of structures when added to aqueous solution. All these structures form in ways that minimize contact between the hydrophobic lipid chains and the aqueous milieu. For example, when small amounts of a fatty acid are added to an aqueous solution, a mono-layer is formed at the air-water interface, with the polar head groups in contact with the water surface and the hydrophobic tails in contact with the air (Figure 9.2). Few lipid molecules are found as monomers in solution. 

As schematically shown in Fig. 1C, a carrier is an amphiphilic molecule capable of residing at the membrane aqueous interface with its lipophilic side interacting with the lipid of the membrane, with polar moieties directed outward into the aqueous phase, and with the polar moieties of a chemical nature to induce an ion into interaction. In the process of a carrier interacting and complexing with the ion, it... 

Detailed protein structures have been reported for BPI and CETP. Given the aforementioned similarities within this gene family, these protein structures serve as a likely model for the protein structure of PLTP. CETP and BPI are elongated molecules, shaped like a boomerang. There are two domains with similar folds, and a central beta-sheet domain between these two domains. The molecules contain two lipid-binding sites, one in each domain near the interface of the barrels and the central beta-sheet. 

At the N-terminal end of the f loop, near the membrane lipid interface, there is an autoinhibitory domain, rich in both basic and hydrophobic residues and consisting of a 20-aminoacid sequence (219-238). This aminoacid sequence, named exchange inhibitory peptide (XDP), is involved in NCX activity regulation. 

Na+-dependent inactivation. There is a sequence of 20-aminoacids (219-23 8), located in the intracellular f loop near the membrane lipid interface, that seems to be involved in the Na+-dependent inactivation. This autoinhibitory 20-aminoacid sequence might interact with another portion of the f loop (562-679) producing NCX inhibition. In accordance with this view, the synthetic peptide provided with the same sequence of XIP region blocks NCX activity. 

Hydrolysis of substrates is performed in water, buffered aqueous solutions or biphasic mixtures of water and an organic solvent. Hydrolases tolerate low levels of polar organic solvents such as DMSO, DMF, and acetone in aqueous media. These cosolvents help to dissolve hydrophobic substrates. Although most hydrolases require soluble substrates, lipases display weak activity on soluble compounds in aqueous solutions. Their activity markedly increases when the substrate reaches the critical micellar concentration where it forms a second phase. This interfacial activation at the lipid-water interface has been explained by the presence of a... 

An alternative approach is the use of pH-sensitive fluorophores (Lichtenberg and Barenholz, lOSS). These probes are located at the lipid-water interface and their fluorescence behavior reflects the local surface pH, which is a function of the surface potential at the interface. This indirect approach allows the use of vesicles independent of their particle size. Recently, techniques to measure the C potential of Liposome dispersions on the basis of dynamic light scattering became commercially available (Muller et al., 1986). 

In this chapter we describe the basic principles involved in the controlled production and modification of two-dimensional protein crystals. These are synthesized in nature as the outermost cell surface layer (S-layer) of prokaryotic organisms and have been successfully applied as basic building blocks in a biomolecular construction kit. Most importantly, the constituent subunits of the S-layer lattices have the capability to recrystallize into iso-porous closed monolayers in suspension, at liquid-surface interfaces, on lipid films, on liposomes, and on solid supports (e.g., silicon wafers, metals, and polymers). The self-assembled monomolecular lattices have been utilized for the immobilization of functional biomolecules in an ordered fashion and for their controlled confinement in defined areas of nanometer dimension. Thus, S-layers fulfill key requirements for the development of new supramolecular materials and enable the design of a broad spectrum of nanoscale devices, as required in molecular nanotechnology, nanobiotechnology, and biomimetics [1-3]. 

Most important for many applications of S-layer lattices in molecular nanotechnology, biotechnology, and biomimetics was the observation that S-layer proteins are capable of reassembling into large coherent monolayers on solid supports (e.g., silicon wafers, polymers, metals) at the air/water interface and on Langmuir lipid films (Fig. 6) (see Sections V and VIII). 

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