Orientation of lipid spin labels in lecithin multilayers.

Nitroxide-labeled stearic acid and cholestane have been incorporated into lecithin multilayers. The pronounced anisotropy of the preparations reflects a nonrandom structure of the lecithin film and demonstrates that these lipid probes can report structural information from lipid regions resembling those thought to occur in membranes. These two probes differ with respect to the orientation of the NO bond to the long axis, but both orient with their long axes perpendicular to the phospholipid film. Simulated spectra, calculated on the basis of a Gaussian distribution of orientations, are in agreement with the experimental results.