Lipid Acyl Chain Double Bond Position Modulates Membrane Domain Registration/Anti-Registration.

coupling is critical to control the dynamics of membrane domain registration/anti-registration, which is important in maintaining proper biological functions. Factors such as lipid acyl chain inter-digitation and membrane remodeling have been found to be able to regulate the coupling. However, detailed molecular mechanisms that dominate the coupling are still far from clear. Here, we revealed that lipid acyl chain double bond position can regulate the coupling according to our coarse-grained and all-atom molecular dynamics simulations. The farther the double bond is away from the lipid tail terminal, the weaker the attractive interactions between unsaturated lipids. Therefore, the relative motions of membrane domains in two membrane leaflets become more obvious (membrane domain anti-registration). Generally, our simulations validated a direct indicator for the coupling strength, which provides physical insights into the molecular mechanisms of membrane domain registration/anti-registration.