Question

What would happen to a lipid bilayer if:

•Hydrocarbon chain length was reduced

•Each phospholipid molecule were covalently linked to a hydrocarbon tail from the other side of the bilayer

•The layer contained a mix of phospholipids—one with two unsaturated tails, one with two saturatedtails (would they interact with each other equally, or would you see some organizaion?)

Answer 1

What would happen to a lipid bilayer if:

•Hydrocarbon chain length was reduced

Hydrocarbon chain length creates hydrophobicity and spontaneously internalizes itself in membrane bilayer structure (interacting with other hydrophobic tail) and have fluidity. If its length is reduced i.e. hydrophobicity is reduced along with fluidity then there will be many instances one can observe the situation of tailing is at the exterior side of the membrane. Finally there will be less fluidity with distortion of membrane

•Each phospholipid molecule were covalently linked to a hydrocarbon tail from the other side of the bilayer

Such covalent linking will loose mosaic structure. It may not be able to adjust itself for proteins/receptors/signal transducers/epitops, across/exterior/ interior of the membrane

•The layer contained a mix of phospholipids—one with two unsaturated tails, one with two saturatedtails (would they interact with each other equally, or would you see some organizaion?)

Unsaturation leads to create crook/kink in the tail resulted in distances among the phospholipids(linear stacking is observed in saturated phopholipids) thus loosing its intergrity and distinct properties.