Naturally engineered glycolipid biosurfactants leading to distinctive self-assembled structures.

Self-assembling properties of "natural" glycolipid biosurfactants, mannosyl-erythritol lipids A and B (MEL-A, MEL-B), which are abundantly produced from yeast strains, were investigated by using the fluorescence-probe method, dynamic light-scattering (DLS) analysis, freeze-fracture transmission electron microscopy (FF-TEM), and synchrotron small/wide-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS/WAXS) analysis, among other methods. Both MEL-A and MEL-B exhibit excellent self-assembly properties at extremely low concentrations; they self-assemble into large unilamellar vesicles (LUV) just above their critical-aggregation concentration (CAC). The CAC(I) value was found to be 4.0x10(-6) M for MEL-A and 6.0x10(-6) M for MEL-B. Moreover, the self-assembled structure of MEL-A above a CAC(II) value of 2.0x10(-5) M was found to drastically change into sponge structures (L3) composed of a network of randomly connected bilayers that are usually obtained from a complicated multicomponent "synthetic" surfactant system. Interestingly, the average water-channel diameter of the sponge structure was 100 nm. This is relatively large compared with those obtained from "synthetic" surfactant systems. In addition, MEL-B, which has a hydroxyl group at the C-4' position on mannose instead of an acetyl group, gives only one CAC; the self-assembled structure of MEL-B seems to gradually move from LUV to multilamellar vesicles (MLV) with lattice constants of 4.4 nm, depending on the concentration. Furthermore, the lyotropic-liquid-crystal-phase observation at high concentrations demonstrates the formation of an inverted hexagonal phase (H2) for MEL-A, together with a lamella phase (L(alpha)) for MEL-B, indicating a difference between MEL-A and MEL-B molecules in the spontaneous curvature of the assemblies. These results clearly show that the difference in spontaneous curvature caused by the single acetyl group on the head group probably decides the direction of self-assembly of glycolipid biosurfactants. The unique and complex molecular structures with several chiral centers that are molecularly engineered by microorganisms must have led to the sophisticated self-assembling properties of the glycolipid biosurfactants.