Molecular Structure of the Lecithin Ripple Phase

Overview

Journal Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

Specialty Science

Date 2005 Apr 6

PMID 15809443

Citations 31

Authors

Alex H De Vries

Serge Yefimov

Alan E Mark

Siewert J Marrink

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Molecular dynamics simulations of lecithin lipid bilayers in water as they are cooled from the liquid crystalline phase show the spontaneous formation of rippled bilayers. The ripple consists of two domains of different length and orientation, connected by a kink. The organization of the lipids in one domain of the ripple is found to be that of a splayed gel; in the other domain the lipids are gel-like and fully interdigitated. In the concave part of the kink region between the domains the lipids are disordered. The results are consistent with the experimental information available and provide an atomic-level model that may be tested by further experiments.

Citing Articles

SMARTINI3 parametrization of multi-scale membrane models via unsupervised learning methods.

Soleimani A, Risselada H Sci Rep. 2024; 14(1):25714.

PMID: 39468134 PMC: 11519956. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-75490-2.

Miscibility of Phosphatidylcholines in Bilayers: Effect of Acyl Chain Unsaturation.

Zak A, Rajtar N, Kulig W, Kepczynski M Membranes (Basel). 2023; 13(4).

PMID: 37103838 PMC: 10146409. DOI: 10.3390/membranes13040411.

Structure of the gel phase of diC22:1PC lipid bilayers determined by x-ray diffraction.

Nagle J, Jennings N, Qin W, Yan D, Tristram-Nagle S, Heinrich F Biophys J. 2022; 122(6):1033-1042.

PMID: 36566351 PMC: 10111270. DOI: 10.1016/j.bpj.2022.12.030.

Elucidating lipid conformations in the ripple phase: Machine learning reveals four lipid populations.

Davies M, Reyes-Figueroa A, Gurtovenko A, Frankel D, Karttunen M Biophys J. 2022; 122(2):442-450.

PMID: 36403088 PMC: 9892614. DOI: 10.1016/j.bpj.2022.11.024.

Molecular substructure of the liquid-ordered phase formed by sphingomyelin and cholesterol: sphingomyelin clusters forming nano-subdomains are a characteristic feature.

Murata M, Matsumori N, Kinoshita M, London E Biophys Rev. 2022; 14(3):655-678.

PMID: 35791389 PMC: 9250586. DOI: 10.1007/s12551-022-00967-1.

References

Carlson , Sethna . Theory of the ripple phase in hydrated phospholipid bilayers. Phys Rev A Gen Phys. 1987; 36(7):3359-3374. DOI: 10.1103/physreva.36.3359. View

Wack , Webb . Synchrotron x-ray study of the modulated lamellar phase P beta ' in the lecithin-water system. Phys Rev A Gen Phys. 1989; 40(5):2712-2730. DOI: 10.1103/physreva.40.2712. View

Katsaras J, Tristram-Nagle S, Liu Y, Headrick R, Fontes E, Mason P . Clarification of the ripple phase of lecithin bilayers using fully hydrated, aligned samples. Phys Rev E Stat Phys Plasmas Fluids Relat Interdiscip Topics. 2000; 61(5 Pt B):5668-77. DOI: 10.1103/physreve.61.5668. View

Scott H . Modeling the lipid component of membranes. Curr Opin Struct Biol. 2002; 12(4):495-502. DOI: 10.1016/s0959-440x(02)00353-6. View

Cameron D, Casal H, Mantsch H . Characterization of the pretransition in 1,2-dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Biochemistry. 1980; 19(16):3665-72. DOI: 10.1021/bi00557a005. View

Wittebort R, Schmidt C, Griffin R . Solid-state carbon-13 nuclear magnetic resonance of the lecithin gel to liquid-crystalline phase transition. Biochemistry. 1981; 20(14):4223-8. DOI: 10.1021/bi00517a042. View

Tu K, Tobias D, Blasie J, Klein M . Molecular dynamics investigation of the structure of a fully hydrated gel-phase dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine bilayer. Biophys J. 1996; 70(2):595-608. PMC: 1224962. DOI: 10.1016/S0006-3495(96)79623-6. View

Tardieu A, Luzzati V, Reman F . Structure and polymorphism of the hydrocarbon chains of lipids: a study of lecithin-water phases. J Mol Biol. 1973; 75(4):711-33. DOI: 10.1016/0022-2836(73)90303-3. View

Tristram-Nagle S, Nagle J . Lipid bilayers: thermodynamics, structure, fluctuations, and interactions. Chem Phys Lipids. 2004; 127(1):3-14. PMC: 2730738. DOI: 10.1016/j.chemphyslip.2003.09.002. View

10.

Hoover . Canonical dynamics: Equilibrium phase-space distributions. Phys Rev A Gen Phys. 1985; 31(3):1695-1697. DOI: 10.1103/physreva.31.1695. View

11.

McIntosh T, Simon S . Area per molecule and distribution of water in fully hydrated dilauroylphosphatidylethanolamine bilayers. Biochemistry. 1986; 25(17):4948-52. DOI: 10.1021/bi00365a034. View

12.

Schneider M, Chan W, Webb W . Fast diffusion along defects and corrugations in phospholipid P beta, liquid crystals. Biophys J. 1983; 43(2):157-65. PMC: 1329245. DOI: 10.1016/S0006-3495(83)84336-7. View

13.

Slater J, Huang C . Interdigitated bilayer membranes. Prog Lipid Res. 1988; 27(4):325-59. DOI: 10.1016/0163-7827(88)90010-0. View

14.

Koynova R, Caffrey M . Phases and phase transitions of the phosphatidylcholines. Biochim Biophys Acta. 1998; 1376(1):91-145. DOI: 10.1016/s0304-4157(98)00006-9. View

15.

Simons K, Ikonen E . Functional rafts in cell membranes. Nature. 1997; 387(6633):569-72. DOI: 10.1038/42408. View

16.

De Vries A, Mark A, Marrink S . Molecular dynamics simulation of the spontaneous formation of a small DPPC vesicle in water in atomistic detail. J Am Chem Soc. 2004; 126(14):4488-9. DOI: 10.1021/ja0398417. View

17.

Nagle J, Tristram-Nagle S . Structure of lipid bilayers. Biochim Biophys Acta. 2000; 1469(3):159-95. PMC: 2747654. DOI: 10.1016/s0304-4157(00)00016-2. View

18.

Marrink S, Lindahl E, Edholm O, Mark A . Simulation of the spontaneous aggregation of phospholipids into bilayers. J Am Chem Soc. 2001; 123(35):8638-9. DOI: 10.1021/ja0159618. View

19.

Sun W, Tristram-Nagle S, Suter R, Nagle J . Structure of the ripple phase in lecithin bilayers. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1996; 93(14):7008-12. PMC: 38925. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.93.14.7008. View

20.

Laggner P, Lohner K, Degovics G, Muller K, Schuster A . Structure and thermodynamics of the dihexadecylphosphatidylcholine-water system. Chem Phys Lipids. 1987; 44(1):31-60. DOI: 10.1016/0009-3084(87)90004-1. View