A theory of phase transitions and phase diagrams for one- and two-component phospholipid bilayers.
A statistical mechanical partition function for phospholipid bilayers is constructed to obtain a theoretical description of the chain melting phase transition in lipid bilayer membranes and of the phase diagrams for two-component bilayers. In addition to providing an accurate representation of the transition temperatures and enthalpies of one-component bilayers composed of 1,2-diacylphosphatidylcholines, the theory can also account for the shapes of the phase diagrams observed for bilayers which are binary mixtures of these compounds with two different hydrocarbon chain lenghts.
D007700:Kinetics; D008433:Mathematics; D008567:Membranes, Artificial; D008954:Models, Biological; D010713:Phosphatidylcholines; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship; D013696:Temperature; D013816:Thermodynamics
D008567:Membranes, Artificial; D010713:Phosphatidylcholines