Phospholipids liquid crystalline bilayers

The classic X-ray diffraction work of Small et al. [5,207,208] pointed out the existence of inverted (reverse) bile salt micelles within mixed bile salt-phospholipid liquid crystalline bilayers. The aggregates were considered to consist of 2-4 molecules (of cholate) with their hydrophilic sides facing inwards bound by hydrogen bonds between the hydroxyl groups, leaving their hydrophobic sides facing outwards to interact with the acyl chains of the phospholipid. At saturation, about 1 molecule of cholate was present for every 2 molecules of lecithin. Appreciably more bile salts... 

Phospholipids, which are one of the main structural components of the membrane, are present primarily as bilayers, as shown by molecular spectroscopy, electron microscopy and membrane transport studies (see Section 6.4.4). Phospholipid mobility in the membrane is limited. Rotational and vibrational motion is very rapid (the amplitude of the vibration of the alkyl chains increases with increasing distance from the polar head). Lateral diffusion is also fast (in the direction parallel to the membrane surface). In contrast, transport of the phospholipid from one side of the membrane to the other (flip-flop) is very slow. These properties are typical for the liquid-crystal type of membranes, characterized chiefly by ordering along a single coordinate. When decreasing the temperature (passing the transition or Kraft point, characteristic for various phospholipids), the liquid-crystalline bilayer is converted into the crystalline (gel) structure, where movement in the plane is impossible. 

Natural biological membranes consist of lipid bilayers, which typically comprise a complex mixture of phospholipids and sterol, along with embedded or surface associated proteins. The sterol cholesterol is an important component of animal cell membranes, which may consist of up to 50 mol% cholesterol. As cholesterol can significantly modify the bilayer physical properties, such as acyl-chain orientational order, model membranes containing cholesterol have been studied extensively. Spectroscopic and diffraction experiments reveal that cholesterol in a lipid-crystalline bilayer increases the orientational order of the lipid acyl-chains without substantially restricting the mobility of the lipid molecules. Cholesterol thickens a liquid-crystalline bilayer and increases the packing density of lipid acyl-chains in the plane of the bilayer in a way that has been referred to as a condensing effect. 

The interactions obviously differed between the lipid bilayers and the natural membranes. Furthermore, cholesterol slightly hinders the drug partitioning into the liquid-crystalline bilayers, in agreement with several previous reports, and the drug molecules interact electrostatically with membrane proteins at the hydrophilic interface adjacent to the polar headgroups of the phospholipid molecules (7). 

The cytoplasm of bacteria is surrounded by a cell envelope which is composed of several layers. The inner layer, the cytoplasmic membrane, is in direct contact with the cytoplasm. It consists of a liquid-crystalline bilayer of phospholipids in which proteins are embedded. 

We have also analyzed the interactions between gel and liquid crystalline bilayers composed of the second most common membrane phospholipid PE. Figure 5 shows electron density profiles of bacterial PE (BPE), which is in the liquid crystalline phase at room temperature. The figure shows profiles of BPE at zero applied pressure and in 60% PVP, the same conditions shown for the profiles of EPC (Fig. 2). Each profile shows two bilayers, with the intervening fluid space. The bilayer on the left is centered at the origin with the high density head group peaks located at 20 A. Note that the bilayers for BPE in water and in 60% PVP nearly superimpose, indicating that, as was the case for EPC (Fig. 2), the amount of osmotic stress... 

Membranes are composed of phospholipids and proteins. The fatty acid composition of the phospholipids in a membrane influences how it is affected by the cold. In general, as the temperature of a cell is lowered the lipids in the membrane bilayer undergo a phase transition from a liquid crystalline (fluid) state to a gel (more solid) state. The temperature at which this transition takes place is very narrow for phospholipids composed of a simple mixture of fatty acids, but is quite broad for the phospholipids in cellular membranes. It is usually implied from various methods... 

Pressure was applied in this study to fine tune the lipid chain-lengths and conformation and to select specific lamellar phases. For example, the phospholipid bilayer thickness increases by 1 A/kbar in the liquid-crystalline phase, and up to six gel phases have been found in fully hydrated DPPC dispersions in the pressure-temperature phase space up to 15 kbar and 80 °C, respectively. NMR spectral parameters were used to detect structural and dynamic changes upon incorporation of the polypeptide into the lipid bilayers. 

These hydrophobic crystallites fit properly into a planar bilayer by formation of H-bonds between the free end groups of the oligomers and the polar head groups of the phospholipids. In other words, a membrane contains islands of crystalline poly(3-HB) within the liquid crystalline phospholipid phase. A schematic representation is shown in Figure 8. Single-channel current fluctuations are assumed to... 

Although the majority of the lipids in M. laidlawii membranes appear to be in a liquid-crystalline state, the system possesses the same physical properties that many other membranes possess. The ORD is that of a red-shifted a-helix high resolution NMR does not show obvious absorption by hydrocarbon protons, and infrared spectroscopy shows no ft structure. Like erythrocyte ghosts, treatment with pronase leaves an enzyme-resistant core containing about 20% of the protein of the intact membrane (56). This residual core retains the membrane lipid and appears membranous in the electron microscope (56). Like many others, M. laidlawii membranes are solubilized by detergents and can be reconstituted by removal of detergent. Apparently all of these properties can be consistent with a structure in which the lipids are predominantly in the bilayer conformation. The spectroscopic data are therefore insufficient to reject the concept of a phospholipid bilayer structure or to... 

Liquid crystals, liposomes, and artificial membranes. Phospholipids dissolve in water to form true solutions only at very low concentrations ( 10-10 M for distearoyl phosphatidylcholine). At higher concentrations they exist in liquid crystalline phases in which the molecules are partially oriented. Phosphatidylcholines (lecithins) exist almost exclusively in a lamellar (smectic) phase in which the molecules form bilayers. In a warm phosphatidylcholine-water mixture containing at least 30% water by weight the phospholipid forms multilamellar vesicles, one lipid bilayer surrounding another in an "onion skin" structure. When such vesicles are subjected to ultrasonic vibration they break up, forming some very small vesicles of diameter down to 25 nm which are surrounded by a single bilayer. These unilamellar vesicles are often used for study of the properties of bilayers. Vesicles of both types are often called liposomes.75-77... 

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