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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2008 Sep 29.
Published in final edited form as: J Am Chem Soc. 2006 Mar 22;128(11):3800–3807. doi: 10.1021/ja058045t

Figure 10.

Figure 10

(a) The green line shows the unit cell of the inverted hexagonal phase (the x, y coordinates in Å). The red line gives the equivalent radius R* (θ) constructed such that the area in red is proportional to the number of lipid chains distributed between θ and θ + dθ. The closeness of the green and red lines is an indication that the lipid chains pack the hexagonal unit cell at constant volume per chain, (b) The average lipid is composed of 1/3 cholesterol and 2/3 dil8:0(9–10dibromo)PC. (The image of the molecular model for di18:0(9–10dibromo)PC was taken from http://www.avantilipids.com/. The blue atoms are bromines.) There are 12.6 average molecules in a unit cell cylinder of 8.6Å in height. The headgroup/chain interface is circular. The average lipid occupies the same volume irrespective of the degree of chain stretching, whether to the side or to the corner of the hexagonal unit cell.