The hydrophobic adsorption of charged molecules to bilayer membranes: a test of the applicability of the stern equation.

To describe the hydrophobic adsorption of charged molecules to bilayer membranes, one must recognize that the adsorption produces a change in the electrostatic potential at the surface of the membrane. The surface potential produced by the adsorption of the charged molecules can be described most simply by the Gouy equation from the theory of the diffuse double layer. This potential will tend to lower the concentration of the adsorbing ions in the aqueous phase immediately adjacent to the membrane, a phenomenon which can be described by the Boltzmann relation. The number of adsorbed ions is, in turn, a function of the aqueous concentration of these ions at the membrane solution interface and can be described, in the simplest case, by a Langmuir adsorption isotherm. If the ions are regarded as point charges, the combination of the Gouy, Boltzmann, and Langmuir relations may be considered a simplified Stern equation. To test experimentally the applicability of this equation, one should measure both the charge density and surface potential as a function of the concentration of adsorbing molecules in the bulk aqueous phases. Direct, accurate measurements of one of these parameters, the number of moles of 2, 6-toluidinylnaphthalenesulfonate ions bound to vesicles formed from phosphatidylcholine, are available in the literature (Huang, C., and Charlton, J.P. (1972), Biochemistry 11, 735). We estimated the change in the surface potential in two independent ways; by means of conductance measurements with "probe" molecules on planar black lipid membranes and by means of electrophoresis measurements on multilaminar unsonicated vesicles. The two estimates agreed with one another and all of the data could be adequately described by the Stern equation, assuming, at 25 degrees C, a dissociation constant of 2 X 10(-4) M and a maximum number of binding sites of 1/70 A2.