Interfacial behavior of Myristic acid in mixtures with DMPC and Cholesterol

Binary mixture monolayers of Myristic acid (MA) with the same length of saturated acyl chain lipid viz 1,2-myristoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DMPC) and Cholesterol (Chol), were investigated under different experimental conditions using Langmuir monolayers (LMs). The interfacial pressure-area (π-A) isotherms, excess molecular area, excess free energy and fluorescence microscopy (FM) images were recorded at the air/water interface. Monolayers of both systems (e.g. MA/DMPC, MA/Chol) reach the closest acyl hydrophobic chain packing in the range 0.20 < x_MA < 0.70. Thermodynamic analysis indicates miscibility of the binary mixtures when spread at the air/water interface with negative deviation from the ideal behavior. Morphological features of MA/DMPC systems were found to depend strongly on MA mole fraction and pressures by showing two extreme minima in Gibbs free energy of mixing, while MA/Chol systems showed only an effective condensing effect at x_MA = 0.90. In the whole range of compositions studied here, the liquid-expanded (LE) to liquid-condensed (LC) phase transition occurs at increasing x_AM as it accomplished by a huge increase in the inverse compressibility modulus. FM observations confirmed the phase-transition and condensing effects of both mixture monolayers as evidenced by Gibbs free energy of mixing in a limited range of compositions.