Regensburg 2025 – scientific programme
Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help
BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 5: Membranes and Vesicles I
BP 5.1: Talk
Monday, March 17, 2025, 11:30–11:45, H46
In-Plane Correlations in Fluid Lipid Monolayers - Experiments and Molecular Dynamics Simulations — •Kay-Robert Dormann1, Joshua Reed1, Matej Kanduč2, Benno Liebchen1, and Emanuel Schneck1 — 1Institut für Physik kondensierter Materie, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Hochschulstr. 8, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany — 2Department of Theoretical Physics, Jožef Stefan Institute, Jamova 39, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Biological membranes predominantly consist of fluid lipid phases featuring lateral mobility and a considerable disorder of their hydrocarbon chains. Langmuir monolayers of lipids at the air/water interface are versatile model systems for fundamental physicochemical and biophysical membrane investigations. Recent experimental studies utilizing grazing-incidence x-ray diffraction (GIXD) have probed the chain correlation peak in fluid phospholipid monolayers as a function of the lipids’ lateral packing. However, interpretation of the peak characteristics with over-simplified models based, for example, on rod-like chains yields only limited insights.
Here, we perform molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of phospholipids in the same monolayer configuration and predict the diffraction patterns originating from the chain correlations for a rigorous comparison with the experimental ones. The MD simulations reproduce the peak characteristics and their dependence on lateral packing well. Moreover, the experimentally validated simulation trajectories contain comprehensive information on the underlying chain correlations.
Keywords: air/water interfaces; molecular dynamics simulations; GIXD; phospholipids; 3d structure factor