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Water on hydrophobic surfaces will exhibit a high contact angle. Examples of hydrophobic molecules include the alkanes, oils, fats, and greasy substances in general. Hydrophobic materials are used for oil removal from water, the management of oil spills, and chemical separation processes to remove non-polar substances from polar compounds. [2]
In aqueous solutions, phospholipids are driven by hydrophobic interactions, which result in the fatty acid tails aggregating to minimize interactions with the water molecules. The result is often a phospholipid bilayer : a membrane that consists of two layers of oppositely oriented phospholipid molecules, with their heads exposed to the liquid ...
Surfactant molecules have a molecular weight which is generally of a few hundreds of grams per mole while block copolymers are generally one or two orders of magnitude larger. Moreover, thanks to the larger hydrophilic and hydrophobic parts, block copolymers can have a much more pronounced amphiphilic nature when compared to surfactant molecules.
This property can be utilized to load liposomes with hydrophobic and/or hydrophilic molecules, a process known as encapsulation. [18] Typically, liposomes are prepared in a solution containing the compound to be trapped, which can either be an aqueous solution for encapsulating hydrophilic compounds like proteins, [ 19 ] [ 20 ] or solutions in ...
The three main structures phospholipids form in solution; the liposome (a closed bilayer), the micelle and the bilayer. [1] The lipid bilayer (or phospholipid bilayer) is a thin polar membrane made of two layers of lipid molecules. These membranes form a continuous barrier around all cells.
Although the term lipid is sometimes used as a synonym for fats, fats are a subgroup of lipids called triglycerides. Lipids also encompass molecules such as fatty acids and their derivatives (including tri-, di-, monoglycerides, and phospholipids), as well as other sterol-containing metabolites such as cholesterol. [6]
Cross-sectional view of the structures that can be formed by phospholipids in an aqueous solution. A biological membrane, biomembrane or cell membrane is a selectively permeable membrane that separates the interior of a cell from the external environment or creates intracellular compartments by serving as a boundary between one part of the cell and another.
Each glycerophospholipid molecule consists of a small polar head group and two long hydrophobic chains. In the cell membrane, the two layers of phospholipids are arranged as follows: the hydrophobic tails point to each other and form a fatty, hydrophobic center; the ionic head groups are placed at the inner and outer surfaces of the cell membrane