Abstract
The line tension or excess free energy per unit length of a bilayer edge is an essential measure of the toughness of a lipid bilayer and its ability to support nanoscopic pores. Well-converged values for the line tension of model pure lipid bilayer edges are important for evaluation of the tendency of additives to stabilize or destabilize the edge. Experimental measurements of bilayer edge line tension are challenging, and new approaches are still under development. In this study we report trends for line tensions and microscopic details of the lipid bilayer edge from a series of atomistic simulations of phosphatidylcholine lipids with varying degree of saturation and tail lengths. The simulation line tensions we obtain are higher than those reported from experiments. The choice of force-field on the resulting ribbon properties was investigated and found to not affect the results. The energetics of edge formation as an area expansion perturbation to the bilayer state was also explored and explains the simulation line tensions within a factor of two.
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