Spontaneous formation of asymmetric lipid bilayers by adsorption of vesicles.

We have investigated the adsorption of phospholipid mixtures using neutron reflection. Small sonicated unilamellar vesicles (SUV) composed of DOPC and d(62)-DPPC were incubated at 50 degrees C in contact with a silica surface using a method commonly employed to form supported model membranes. The composition of the mixed supported bilayer was found to be substantially different from that of the bulk vesicles in a direction indicating a higher affinity of DPPC for the silica surface. Formation of an asymmetric bilayer arrangement was also discovered in all the cases studied. DPPC tended to dominate the composition of the leaflet next to silica, while the outer leaflet was generally closer to the bulk composition. The supported bilayers also exhibited increasing interfacial roughness in the outer membrane leaflet in the region of the DOPC-DPPC gel-liquid immiscibility region. To our knowledge, this is the first time that both the structure and the absolute composition of a mixed-lipid supported bilayer have been resolved, and the results raise a number of questions regarding the adsorption of vesicles and the properties of supported bilayers, which are discussed in terms of the bulk phase diagram of DOPC and DPPC.