Investigation of the structure of multilayer lipid membranes by real-time neutron diffraction

This paper reports on the results of neutron diffraction experiments on the study of structural changes in multilayer lipid membranes as a function of the degree of hydration. The experiments have been performed on a time-of-flight diffractometer at the IBR-2 pulsed reactor (Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia) with a dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC) multilayer membrane oriented on a quartz plate. The structural parameters have been determined from the simultaneously measured several (up to five) diffraction orders of reflection, which has made it possible to calculate the profile of the DPPC bilayer structure. A high rate of the measurement of diffraction patterns has allowed one to trace the evolution the lamellar structure of the lipid bilayer in the course of its hydration and dehydration. The minimum time of accumulation of the necessary statistics is 3 min, which has made it possible to determine the characteristic times of transition processes in the membrane with a high accuracy.