摘要
A bilayer structure is an important immediate for the vesicle formation. However,the mechanism for the bilayer-vesicle transition remains unclear. In this work,a dissipative particle dynamics(DPD) simulation method was employed to study the mechanism of the bilayer-vesicle transition. A coarse-grained model was built based on a lipid molecule termed dimyristoylphosphatidylcholine(DMPC). Simulations were performed from two different initial configurations:a random dispersed solution and a tensionless bilayer. It was found that the bilayer-vesicle transition was driven by the minimization of the water-tail hydrophobic interaction energy,and was accompanied with the increase of the position entropy due to the redistribution of water molecules. The bulk pressure was reduced during the bilayer-vesicle transition,suggesting the evolved vesicle morphology was at the relatively low free energy state. The membrane in the product vesicle was a two-dimensional fluid. It can be concluded that the membrane of a vesicle is not interdigitated and most of the bonds in lipid chains are inclined to orient along the radical axis of the vesicle.
A bilayer structure is an important immediate for the vesicle formation. However, the mechanism for the bilayer-vesicle transition remains unclear. In this work, a dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulation method was employed to study the mechanism of the bilayer-vesicle transition. A coarse-grained model was built based on a lipid molecule termed dimyristoylphosphatidylcholine (DMPC). Simulations were performed from two different initial configurations: a random dispersed solution and a tensionless bilayer. It was found that the bilayer-vesicle transition was driven by the minimization of the water-tail hydrophobic interaction energy, and was accompanied with the increase of the position entropy due to the redistribution of water molecules. The bulk pressure was reduced during the bilayer-vesicle transition, suggesting the evolved vesicle morphology was at the relatively low free energy state. The membrane in the product vesicle was a two-dimensional fluid. It can be concluded that the membrane of a vesicle is not interdigitated and most of the bonds in lipid chains are inclined to orient along the radical axis of the vesicle.
基金
Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 20674093)
