Quantitative determination of hydrocarbon chain conformational order in bilayers of saturated phosphatidylcholines of various chain lengths by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy.

The infrared spectra of aqueous dispersions of a homologous series of symmetric-chain, disaturated phosphatidylcholines, with fatty acyl chain lengths ranging from 12 to 19 carbons, have been measured at comparable reduced temperatures in their liquid-crystalline phases. The infrared spectra of these compounds contain bands that are dependent on the conformation of the fatty acyl chains. In particular, in the 1400-1300-cm-1 spectral region, there are bands due to CH2 wagging which are specific for the different types of gauche conformers. Thus, gauche-trans-gauché sequences (or kinks) give a band at 1367 cm-1, end-gauche conformers a band at 1341 cm-1, and double-gauche conformers a band at 1355 cm-1. The intensities of these bands were determined and normalized to the intensity of the conformation-insensitive band due to symmetric methyl bending at 1378 cm-1. The intensities of the different "gauche" bands yield a "per chain" intensity, which is directly related to the concentration of the different types of conformational defects. We find that, within experimental error, the concentration of end-gauche and double-gauche conformers is relatively low and practically invariant with chain length when a series of homologous phosphatidylcholines are compared at the same reduced temperature. In contrast, the concentration of gauche-trans-gauché sequences (kink defects) is much higher and increases as the chain length increases. For dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine we find that there are about 1.2 kink, 0.5-0.6 end-gauche, and 0.4 double-gauche conformers per hydrocarbon chain.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)