A theory of phase transitions and phase diagrams for one- and two-component phospholipid bilayers

Abstract
A statistical mechanical partition function for phospholipid bilayers is constructed to obtain a theoretical description of the chain melting phase transition in lipid bilayer membranes and of the phase diagrams for 2-component bilayers.In addition to providing an accurate representation of the transition temperatures and enthalpies of 1-component bilayers composed of 1,2-diacylphosphatidylcholines, the theory can also account for the shapes of the phase diagrams observed for bilayers which are binary mixtures of these compounds with 2 different hydrocarbon chain lengths.