Helmerich Advanced Technology Research Center, School of Material Science and Engineering, Oklahoma State University, Tulsa, OK 74106, USA.
Int J Mol Sci. 2013 Feb 8;14(2):3824-33. doi: 10.3390/ijms14023824.
A recent experimental study [1] has demonstrated the alignment of phase separated domains across hundreds of bilayer units in multicomponent stacked lipid bilayers. The origin of this alignment is the interlamellar coupling of laterally phase separated domains. Here, we develop a theoretical model that presents the energetics description of this phenomenon based on the minimization of the free energy of the system. Specifically, we use solution theory to estimate the competition between energy and entropy in different stacking configurations. The model furnishes an elemental phase diagram, which maps the domain distributions in terms of the strength of the intra- and inter-layer interactions and estimates the value of inter-layer coupling for complete alignment of domains in the stacks of five and ten bilayers. The area fraction occupied by co-existing phases was calculated for the system of the minimum free energy, which showed a good agreement with experimental observations.
最近的一项实验研究[1]表明，在多组分堆叠脂质双层中，数百个双层单元的相分离域是对齐的。这种对齐的起源是横向相分离域的层间耦合。在这里，我们开发了一个理论模型，该模型基于系统自由能的最小化，提供了对这种现象的能量描述。具体来说，我们使用溶液理论来估计不同堆积构型中能量和熵的竞争。该模型提供了一个基本的相图，根据层内和层间相互作用的强度来映射域分布，并估计了五层和十层堆叠中域完全对齐的层间耦合强度。对于具有最小自由能的系统，计算了共存相的面积分数，该分数与实验观察结果吻合较好。
