Planar confined water organisation in lipid bilayer stacks of phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylethanolamine
Gerome Vancuylenberg, Amin Sadeghpour, Arwen I. I. Tyler, Michael Rappolt
Abstract
-3-phosphoethanolamine (DMPE) in the fluid lamellar phase of multilamellar vesicles was investigated. A new model for describing three different water regions is proposed, which have been characterised using a combination of small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and densitometry. The three regions concern (i) 'the headgroup water', (ii) 'perturbed water' near the membrane/water interface and (iii) a core layer of 'free water' (unperturbed water). The behaviour of all three layers is discussed as a function of temperature, concerning influences of chain saturation and headgroup type. While the overall water layer and perturbed water layer thickness increase with temperature, the free water layer displays the opposite trend for PCs, and in PEs is completely absent. Furthermore, an estimate of the temperature dependent headgroup orientation is given for both, PCs and PEs. The newly presented structural data deduced from the three-water region model will be useful for future refined molecular dynamics simulations and allow a better theoretical understanding of the attractive van der Waals force between adjacent membranes.