Effect of Fatty Acid on the Membrane Fluidity of Liposomes

Abstract

In the present work, the interaction of fatty acid with vesicle membrane of phospholipids was investigated using 3 different kinds of fatty acids such as stearic acid (SA), oleic acid (OA) and linoleic acid (LA). Basically, the same trend has been found in 3 fatty acid systems. The addition of fatty acid produced a close packing of liposome due to the penetration of fatty acid molecules into liposome vesicles, which resulted in a decrease in size and an increase in zeta potential of liposome. However, excessive addition of fatty acid produced a transition from liposomes to aggregates of lipid particles having polymorphic structure. The membrane fluidity, characterized by measuring membrane deformability and fluorescence anisotropy ratio of liposomes, was in good agreement with measurement results of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and particle size. The minimum size and closest packing of liposome with SA, OA and LA were found when the molar ratios of fatty acid to lecithin were 0.70, 0.50, and 0.25 respectively.