Biophysical Journal 61: 1616-1629 (1992)
© 1992 the Biophysical Society

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Phospholipid interactions in model membrane systems. II. Theory.

Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of California, San Francisco 94143.

ABSTRACT

We describe statistical thermodynamic theory for the lateral interactions among phospholipid head groups in monolayers and bilayers. Extensive monolayer experiments show that at low surface densities, PC head groups have strong lateral repulsions which increase considerably with temperature, whereas PE interactions are much weaker and have no significant temperature dependence (see the preceding paper). In previous work, we showed that the second virial coefficients for these interactions can be explained by: (a) steric repulsions among the head groups, and (b) a tilting of the P-N+ dipole of PC so that the N+ end enters the oil phase, to an extent that increases with temperature. It was also predicted that PE interactions should be weaker and less temperature dependent because the N+ terminal of the PE head-group is hydrophilic, hence, it is tilted into the water phase, so dipolar contributions among PE's are negligible due to the high dielectric constant of water. In the present work, we broaden the theory to treat phospholipid interactions up to higher lateral surface densities. We generalize the Hill interfacial virial expansion to account for dipoles and to include the third virial term. We show that to account for the large third virial coefficients for both PC and PE requires that the short range lateral attractions among the head groups also be taken into account. In addition, the third virial coefficient includes fluctuating head group dipoles, computed by Monte Carlo integration assuming pairwise additivity of the instantaneous pair potentials. We find that because the dipole fluctuations are correlated, the average triplet interactions do not equal the sum of the average dipole pair potentials. This is important for predicting, the magnitude and the independence of temperature of the third virial coefficients for PC. The consistency of the theory with data of both the second and the third virial coefficients extends the applicability of the head-group model to semiconcentrated monolayers, in agreement with the surface potential data in the foregoing paper.

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