Electrostatic Shape Control of a Charged Molecular Membrane from Ribbon to Scroll
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Electrostatic shape control of a charged molecular membrane from ribbon to scroll Changrui Gaoa,1, Sumit Kewalramania,1, Dulce Maria Valenciaa, Honghao Lia, Joseph M. McCourtb, Monica Olvera de la Cruza,b,c,2, and Michael J. Bedzyka,b,2 aDepartment of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208; bDepartment of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208; and cDepartment of Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208 Edited by Lia Addadi, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, and approved September 22, 2019 (received for review August 12, 2019) Bilayers of amphiphiles can organize into spherical vesicles, nano- acids, nanoribbons were found to transform into helical ribbons as tubes, planar, undulating, and helical nanoribbons, and scroll-like the PA concentration was reduced (17) and into helical and cochleates. These bilayer-related architectures interconvert under twisted nanoribbons when the amino acid sequence was permuted suitable conditions. Here, a charged, chiral amphiphile (palmitoyl- (18). Helical assemblies have been previously used to template lysine, C16-K1) is used to elucidate the pathway for planar nano- semiconductor nanohelices (19). Despite the progress, the corre- ribbon to cochleate transition induced by salt (NaCl) concentration. lation between experimental conditions such as molecular design, In situ small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS/WAXS), atomic ionic strength, pH, amphiphile concentration, and the attained force and cryogenic transmission electron microscopies (AFM and nanoribbon-related morphology are not fully established. There- cryo-TEM) tracked these transformations over angstrom to microme- fore, precise control of nanoribbon-related architecture requires ter length scales. AFM reveals that the large length (L) to width (W) further understanding of the delicate interplay between intermo- ratio nanoribbons (L/W > 10) convert to sheets (L/W → 1) before lecular interactions and elastic and interfacial energies. rolling into cochleates. A theoretical model based on electrostatic A recent theoretical study showed that for charged molecules, and surface energies shows that the nanoribbons convert to sheets tuning the range of electrostatic interactions could induce tran- via a first-order transition, at a critical Debye length, with 2 shallow sitions between different nanoribbon-related morphologies (20). minima of the order of thermal energy at L/W >> 1 and at L/W = 1. Specifically, a phase diagram was deduced for a 2D lattice of CHEMISTRY SAXS shows that interbilayer spacing (D) in the cochleates scales charged points, which interacted via long-range repulsive elec- linearly with the Debye length, and ranges from 13 to 35 nm for trostatic interactions and short-range attractive interactions. NaCl concentrations from 100 to 5 mM. Theoretical arguments that Planar nanoribbon to wavy ribbon with periodic undulations to include electrostatic and elastic energies explain the membrane roll- helical ribbon transitions were predicted as the range of the ing and the bilayer separation–Debye length relationship. These electrostatic interactions is increased. This study suggests a facile models suggest that the salt-induced ribbon to cochleate transi- method for accessing distinct nanoribbon architectures by vary- tion should be common to all charged bilayers possessing an ing the ionic strength (μ) of the solution because the range of intrinsic curvature, which in the present case originates from electrostatic interactions as parametrized by Debye length (λd) −1/2 molecular chirality. Our studies show how electrostatic interac- scales as μ . Recent experiments also attest that tuning the tions can be tuned to attain and control cochleate structures, which have potential for encapsulating, and releasing macromol- Significance ecules in a size-selective manner. Controlling the shape and internal architecture of assemblies of bilayer assembly | electrostatics | nanoribbon | cochleate amphiphiles is critical for many technologies. The structure, and thus the function, of these assemblies reconfigures in re- mphiphilic molecules can self-assemble into a variety of 3D, sponse to stimuli, via mechanisms that are often elusive. Here, A2D, and 1D nano- and mesoscale structures. These struc- we observe and explain how molecular reordering driven by tures serve as simplified models for understanding biological variations in electrostatic screening length induce micrometer- assemblies and their functions and have applications in drug scale structural changes in crystalline membranes of charged, delivery (1–5), regenerative medicine (6, 7), biosensing (8), hy- chiral molecules: The transformation of high aspect ratio, pla- drogen production (9, 10), and clean water technologies (11). An nar bilayers into scroll-like cochleates by increasing the solution interesting assembly structure is the nanoribbon, which is a high salt content is described and explained. Our study suggests that aspect ratio (10:1 or greater) bilayer. Nanoribbons are a gateway to this transformation should be general to charged bilayers pos- a number of other morphologies with distinct functionalities. For sessing a spontaneous curvature. example, nanoribbons of a charged chromophore amphiphile can transform to a scroll-like (cochleate) morphology when the solu- Author contributions: S.K., M.O.d.l.C., and M.J.B. designed research; C.G., S.K., D.M.V., H.L., and J.M.M. performed research; C.G., S.K., D.M.V., H.L., J.M.M., M.O.d.l.C., and M.J.B. tion ionic strength is increased (9). These cochleates serve as ef- analyzed data; and C.G., S.K., D.M.V., M.O.d.l.C., and M.J.B. wrote the paper. ficient charge-transfer agents for photocatalysts in hydrogen The authors declare no competing interest. production. Cochleate formation from liposomes of negatively charged phospholipids in the presence of multivalent cations also This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. involves a nanoribbon intermediate (3, 12, 13). Biocompatible Published under the PNAS license. phospholipid cochleates are being explored as drug-delivery agents Data deposition: All the X-ray data shown in the manuscript and the SI Appendix, as well as the code for simulating the WAXS intensity along with the data from theory calcula- because they can trap macromolecules, such as proteins, and tions, have been deposited at Bitbucket (https://bitbucket.org/NUaztec/gao_et_al_pnas_ DNA, and provide protection against degradation due to their 2019_charged_membrane/src/master/). multilayer geometry. Nanoribbons have also been observed in 1C.G. and S.K. contributed equally to this work. peptide amphiphiles (PAs), which consist of a sequence of amino 2To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: [email protected] or acids covalently linked to an alkyl tail (14, 15). For example, a [email protected]. peptide amphiphile that stimulates collagen production has been This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10. found to self-assemble into nanotapes with an internal bilayer 1073/pnas.1913632116/-/DCSupplemental. structure (16). In a PA with alternating charged and neutral amino www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1913632116 PNAS Latest Articles | 1of7 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 ionic strength leads to predictable changes in the nanoribbon- Fig. S1). Therefore, under the experimental conditions, nearly all related assembly morphology. For example, the period of the of the C16K1 are expected to be in their +1 ionized state. twists in amyloid fibril aggregates monotonically decreases with The AFM image of C16K1 assemblies at a silica (SiOx)/water decreasing ionic strength (21). interface (Fig. 1B) and other AFM images collected at different In this study, we analyze morphological changes in charged spots on the substrate reveal that in the absence of added salt, W planar nanoribbons as a function of increasing ionic strength. In C16K1 assembles into flat ribbons, with widths ( ) in the range L μ this regime, nanoribbon to cochleate transformations have been of a few hundred nm, lengths ( ) ranging from 2 to 20 m, and L W observed in phospholipids (12) and chromophore amphiphiles (9, aspect ratio ( / ) as high as 30. All of the ribbons exhibit the same thickness of ∼4.0 nm, as shown by a representative AFM 10, 22, 23). However, the generality and the mechanistic details of C this transition are still unknown. In particular, the correlation height scan (Fig. 1 ). This thickness is less than twice the length (5.4 nm) of fully extended C K molecules (Fig. 1A), suggesting between the ionic strength induced changes in the molecular 16 1 that the C K ribbons are bilayers with the alkyl tails of the 2 packing and the mesoscopic morphology transformations are 16 1 leaflets interdigitated. The interdigitated bilayer configuration, elusive. The principal aim of this study is to start with a nano- which has also been observed in C16K2 (24) and other PAs (17), ribbon structure and experimentally trace the micrometer to is expected for molecules with headgroup cross-sectional areas angstrom length-scale transformations in the membrane much larger than that for the alkyl tails. structure as a function of ionic strength by using a combination Screening effects are analyzed in C16K1 dispersions that contain of cryotransmission electron microscopy (cryo-TEM), liquid- NaCl at concentrations (c) ranging from 0 to 100 mM. Fig. 2 A–D atomic force microscopy (liquid-AFM),