The effect of ethanol on the phase transition temperature and the phase structure of monounsaturated phosphatidylcholines

Abstract

Previous studies from our laboratories have delineated the relationship between the acyl chain asymmetry of mixed-chain phosphatidylcholines, C(X):C(Y)PC, and the effect of ethanol concentration, [EtOH], on the main phase transition temperature, Tm, and the phase structure of the lipid bilayer composed of C(X):C(Y)PC using differential scanning calorimetry and X-ray diffraction techniques [Huang and McIntosh, Biophys. J. 72 (1997) 2702–2709]. In the present work, we have extended these studies to characterize the effect of [EtOH] on the Tm and the phase structure of the lipid bilayer composed of sn-1 saturated/sn-2 monounsaturated phosphatidylcholines with various positions of the cis double bond. Specifically, five positional isomers of 1-eicosanoyl-2-eicosenoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholines, C(20):C(20:1Δn)PC with n=5, 8, 11, 13 and 17, were synthesized and studied. For C(20):C(20:1Δn)PC with n=5 and 8, results from the calorimetric experiments showed that in response to various concentrations of ethanol, the change in Tm of the lipid bilayer composed of monounsaturated lipids was characterized by a sigmoidal or biphasic profile in the plot of Tm versus [EtOH]. In contrast, a continuous depression of the Tm by ethanol was observed calorimetrically for C(20):C(20:1Δn)PC with n≥11. The X-ray diffraction experiments further demonstrated that C(20):C(20:1Δ5)PC and C(20):C(20:1Δ8)PC can undergo the ethanol-induced gel-to-fully interdigitated phase transition at T<Tm. Such a transition, however, was not observed for C(20):C(20:1Δ13)PC even at a very high ethanol concentration of 100 mg/ml. These distinct different effects of [EtOH] on the phase transition temperature and the phase structure can be attributed to various positions of the cis double bond in these monounsaturated phosphatidylcholines. And the different effects of ethanol can, in fact, be explained based on the molecular structures of these monounsaturated lipids packed in the gel-state bilayer as generated by molecular mechanics simulations. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that the ethanol-induced fully interdigitated bilayers are observed at T<Tm for unsaturated phospholipids with well defined double bond positions in their sn-2 acyl chains.