Chiral molecular self-assembly of phospholipid tubules: A circular dichroism study

Spector, Mark S and Easwaran, Kalpathy RK and Jyothi, Ghanta and Selinger, Jonatan V and Singh, Alok and Schnur, Joel M (1996) Chiral molecular self-assembly of phospholipid tubules: A circular dichroism study. In: Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America, 93 (23). pp. 12943-12946.

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Abstract

We report on spectroscopic studies of the chiral structure in phospholipid tubules formed in mixtures of alcohol and water. Synthetic phospholipids containing diacetylenic moieties in the acyl chains self-assemble into hollow, cylindrical tubules in appropriate conditions. Circular dichroism provides a direct measure of chirality of the molecular structure. We find that the CD spectra of tubules formed in mixtures of alcohol and water depends strongly on the alcohol used and the lipid concentration. The relative spectral intensity of different circular dichroism bands correlates with the number of bilayers observed using microscopy. The results provide experimental evidence that tubule formation is based on chiral packing of the lipid molecules and that interbilayer interactions are important to the tubule structure

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America
Publisher:	National Academy of Science
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belongs to National Academy of Science.
Department/Centre:	Division of Biological Sciences > Molecular Biophysics Unit
Date Deposited:	27 Feb 2009 06:41
Last Modified:	19 Sep 2010 05:27
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/19223

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