Experimental determination of the entropic potential between supported fluctuating lipid bilayers

TL;DR

This study measures the interaction potential between supported lipid bilayers, revealing they are more hydrated and exhibit a softer entropic potential than previously thought, due to weak electrostatic interactions.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental determination of the entropic potential between supported fluctuating lipid bilayers using synchrotron radiation.

Findings

Supported bilayers are more hydrated than multilayers.

The interaction potential is significantly softer at equilibrium.

The data favor the 'soft' entropic potential model of Podgornik and Parsegian.

Abstract

The interaction potential between supported floating bilayers has been determined by grazing incidence specular and off-specular scattering using synchrotron radiation. Our measurements demonstrate that floating bilayers are significantly more hydrated than the usually studied multilayers, therefore giving access to more intrinsic properties of the membranes. At equilibrium, the interaction potential can be two orders of magnitude softer than previously reported, which can be explained by the weak electrostatic interaction due to the small fraction (sigma ~ 0.001 e$^-$/nm$^2$) of ionized lipids in the bilayers. Our data are sensitive enough to discriminate between different functional forms of the entropic repulsion proposed in the literature, and the "soft" potential of R. Podgornik and V. Parsegian, Langmuir 8, 557 (1992) is shown to most appropriately describe our data.