Lipid chain packing and lipid-protein interaction in membranes

This article describes briefly several applications of a molecular theory of lipid organization in membranes to systems of biophysical interest. After introducing the basic concepts of this mean field theory we outline three of its recent applications. i) Calculations of lipid chain conformational statistics in membrane bilayers, and comparison of the results (e.g. bond orientational order parameters) to experiment and molecular dynamics simulations. Good agreement is found. ii) A molecular model for lipid-protein interactions, which explicitly considers the effects of a rigid hydrophobic protein on the elastic (conformational) properties of the lipid bilayer. We also analyze the role of the ‘hydrophobic mismatch’ between the protein and lipid bilayer thickness. iii) A molecular level calculation of the vesicle to micelle transition, attendant upon the addition of (‘curvature loving’) surfactant to a lipid bilayer vesicle. Future applications, e.g. to the calculation of the free energy barriers involved in membrane fusion are briefly mentioned.