Molecular simulation of supported lipid bilayers on a coarse grained level

COMP 385

Chenyue Xing, cxing@ucdavis.edu, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of California - Davis, 1 Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616 and Roland Faller, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of California at Davis, one shields avenue, Davis, 95616-5294.
The study of lipid structure and phase behavior at the nano scale length is of importance due to implications in understanding the role of the lipids in biochemical membrane processes. Supported lipid bilayers play a key role in understanding real biological systems but they are vastly underrepresented in computational studies. We performed molecular dynamics simulations of supported lipid bilayers using a coarse grained model. We first focus on the technical implications of supported versus unsupported phospholipid systems in molecular simulations. Additionally we discuss bilayer and surface models in various degree of detail. We will then focus on a coarse-grained model of intermediate granularity. The simulations describe a noticeable influence of the support on the systems. We are able to demonstrate that the bilayer system behaviors change when supported by a hydrophilic surface. Additionally we discuss how different surface topologies affect the bilayer. Finally we discuss differences between the two leaflets induced by the support.