Characterization and Control of Lipid Layer Fluidity in Hybrid Bilayer Membranes

Published

January 31, 2007

Author(s)

Neil A. Anderson, Lee J. Richter, John C. Stephenson, Kimberly A. Briggman

Abstract

The main gel-to-liquid-crystal (LC) phase transition temperature, Tm, of the distal lipid layer in hybrid bilayer membranes (HBMs) under water was investigated using vibrational sum frequency spectroscopy (VSFS). VSFS has unique sensitivity to order/disorder transitions in the lipid acyl chains and can determine Tm for the lipid monolayers in HBMs. We recently reported the observation that Tm is raised and the transition width is broadened for the overlying phospholipid monolayer in HBM systems formed on densely packed crystalline self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) as compared to that of vesicles in solution. In this report, we establish that Tm for the lipid layer of HBMs can be controlled by proper choice of the SAM underlayer. The SAM underlayer of the HBM was systematically altered by using an alkane thiol, a saturated thiolipid, a mixed SAM of a saturated lipid-pyridine disulfide, and finally a mixed SAM of an unsaturated lipid-pyridine disulfide. Tm was measured for two different chain length saturated phosphatidylcholine lipid overlayers on these SAMs. The values obtained show that Tm of the lipid layer of HBMs is sensitive to the composition and/or packing density of molecules in the underlying SAM.

Citation

Journal of the American Chemical Society

Volume

129

Pub Type

Journals

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Citation

Anderson, N. , Richter, L. , Stephenson, J. and Briggman, K. (2007), Characterization and Control of Lipid Layer Fluidity in Hybrid Bilayer Membranes, Journal of the American Chemical Society, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=100963 (Accessed October 14, 2025)