The lipid composition determines the kinetics of adhesion and spreading of liposomes on mercury electrodes

The dependence of membrane properties on their composition was studied by following the adhesion and spreading of unilamellar and multilamellar liposomes on static mercury electrodes with the help of chronoamperometry. The analysis of the peak-shaped signals allows determining the kinetic parameters of the three-step adhesion-spreading process. The presence of cholesterol in the membrane stabilizes the bilayer in the liquid-crystalline phase, and destabilizes the gel phase. The kinetic parameters also show the effect of superlattice formation in the DMPC–cholesterol system. The detergent triton X-100 is only incorporated in the liquid-crystalline DMPC membranes, and it is expelled to the solution when the membrane is transformed to the gel phase. In the liquid-crystalline membrane, it enhances the adhesion-spreading of liposomes on mercury. The lytic peptides mastoparan X and melittin affect the adhesion-spreading in a similar manner. For the rupture-spreading step, their effect is explained by pore formation. The results obtained with lecithins of different length suggest that the bilayer opening process has much in common with flip-flop translocations. For this process the activation energies were found to be independent of the chain length of the lecithin molecules, while the preexponential factor in the Arrhenius equation decreases drastically for longer chains.