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Fast thermal fluctuations and low frequency phonon modes are thought to play a part in the dynamic mechanisms of many important biological functions in cell membranes. Here we report a detailed far-infrared study of the molecular subpicosecond motions of phospholipid bilayers at various hydrations. We show that these systems sustain several low frequency collective modes and deduce that they arise from vibrations of different lipids interacting through intermolecular van der Waals forces. Furthermore, we observe that the low frequency vibrations of lipid membrane have strong similarities with the subpicosecond motions of liquid water and suggest that resonance mechanisms are an important element to the dynamics coupling between membranes and their hydration water.

The effects of hexanol and octanol on the lateral mobility of 1,2-dimyristoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphatidylcholine (DMPC) bilayer are investigated by means of pulsed-gradient stimulated-echo NMR spectroscopy. Three distinct diffusions are identified for the DMPC/alcohol systems. They are ascribed to the water, the alcohol, and the lipid. We find that the presence of alcohols promotes the lipid diffusion process both in the liquid and in the interdigitated phases. Furthermore, using the Arrhenius approach, the activation energies are calculated. An explanation in terms of a free volume model, that takes into account also the observed increase of the activation energy in both phases, is proposed. The results obtained here are compared with those presented in our previous work on 1,2-palmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DPPC) in order to examine the dependence of the lipid translational diffusion process upon the membrane acyl chain length. A peculiar influence of alcohols on different membranes is found.

We investigated the short-wavelength longitudinal and transverse collective dynamics of the fluid and gel phases of phospholipid bilayers by means of molecular dynamics simulation. Similarly to a crystal, the spectrum of collective excitations in a bilayer consists of longitudinal and transverse acoustic modes, though modified by disorder. Beside acoustic modes, a series of broad dispersionless excitations are revealed. The dispersion curves of the observed excitations may be represented in a pseudo-Brillouin zone scheme centered around the spatial correlation peak of the acyl chains. The study provides evidence for a resonant interaction between the lowest frequency optical phonon and the longitudinal acoustic mode.