How Alcohol Chain-Length and Concentration Modulate Hydrogen Bond Formation in a Lipid Bilayer

ABSTRACT

Molecular dynamics simulations are used to measure the change in properties of a hydrated dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine bilayer when solvated with ethanol, propanol, and butanol solutions. There are eight oxygen atoms in dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine that serve as hydrogen bond acceptors, and two of the oxygen atoms participate in hydrogen bonds that exist for significantly longer time spans than the hydrogen bonds at the other six oxygen atoms for the ethanol and propanol simulations. We conclude that this is caused by the lipid head group conformation, where the two favored hydrogen-bonding sites are partially protected between the head group choline and the sn-2 …