L. Fernandezpuente et al., TEMPERATURE AND CHAIN-LENGTH EFFECTS ON BENDING ELASTICITY OF PHOSPHATIDYLCHOLINE BILAYERS, Europhysics letters, 28(3), 1994, pp. 181-186
A strong decrease of the bilayer bending elastic modulus, k(c), has be
en experimentally established for dimyristoyl and dipalmitoyl phosphat
idylcholine, when the liquid-crystal-gel phase transition temperature
is approached from above. This phenomenon may be due to local-curvatur
e-induced changes in the transition temperature. In the liquid-crystal
phase, the bending modulus, k(c), significantly increases as a functi
on of the lipid chain length for dilauryl, dimyristoyl and dipalmitoyl
phosphatidylcholine.