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The solid phase is commonly referred to as a “gel” phase. All lipids have a characteristic temperature at which they undergo a transition from the gel to liquid phase. In both phases the lipid molecules are constrained to the two dimensional plane of the membrane, but in liquid phase bilayers the molecules diffuse freely within this plane.
This random walk exchange allows lipid to diffuse and thus wander across the surface of the membrane.Unlike liquid phase bilayers, the lipids in a gel phase bilayer have less mobility. [31] The phase behavior of lipid bilayers is determined largely by the strength of the attractive Van der Waals interactions between adjacent lipid molecules ...
In biology, membrane fluidity refers to the viscosity of the lipid bilayer of a cell membrane or a synthetic lipid membrane. Lipid packing can influence the fluidity of the membrane. Viscosity of the membrane can affect the rotation and diffusion of proteins and other bio-molecules within the membrane, there-by affecting the functions of these ...
Lipid bilayer budding is a commonplace phenomenon in living cells and relates to the transport of metabolites in the form of vesicles. During this process, a lipid bilayer is subject to internal hydrostatic stresses, in combination with strain restrictions along a bilayer surface, this can lead to elongation of areas of the lipid bilayer by ...
Non-bilayer forming lipid like monogalactosyl diglyceride (MGDG) predominates the bulk lipids in thylakoid membranes, which when hydrated alone, forms reverse hexagonal cylindrical phase. However, in combination with other lipids and carotenoids / chlorophylls of thylakoid membranes, they too conform together as lipid bilayers.
Lipid molecules in the HII phase pack inversely to the packing observed in the hexagonal I phase described above. This phase has the polar head groups on the inside and the hydrophobic, hydrocarbon tails on the outside in solution. The packing ratio for this phase is larger than one, [1] which is synonymous with an inverse cone packing.
In multilamellar liposomes, many such lipid bilayer sheets are layered concentrically with water layers in between. Figure 1 Multi-lamellar phase of aqueous lipid dispersions, each white lamella represents a lipid bilayer organization in liposome made by vortex-mixing of dried total lipid extract of spinach thylakoid membranes with distilled water.
Regarding biological membranes, the liquid ordered phase is a liquid crystalline phase of a lipid bilayer, and is of significant biological importance. It occurs in many lipid mixtures combining cholesterol with a phospholipid and/or sphingolipids e.g. sphingomyelin. This phase has been related to lipid rafts that may exist in plasma membranes.