Skip to main content
. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Oct 22.
Published in final edited form as: Biochim Biophys Acta. 2008 Dec 25;1788(2):507–513. doi: 10.1016/j.bbamem.2008.12.008

Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

A schematic drawing of the correlation between intramembrane lipid dipole moments and molecular orientation/packing density. When lipids are packed tightly, all membrane internal dipole moments (indicated by the black arrows) are oriented in an orderly fashion, thus giving a large dipole potential (top). When lipid packing is disrupted, lipid dipoles are aligned at various angles, effectively canceling each other out (bottom). This would give a small dipole potential. Note that this intramembrane dipole originates from lipid carbonyl dipole and the molecular dipoles of interfacial water molecules and is different from the headgroup dipole arising from phosphate-choline dipolar interactions.