Three Distinct Water Structures at a Zwitterionic Lipid/Water Interface Revealed by Heterodyne-Detected Vibrational Sum Frequency Generation

Lipid/water interfaces and associated interfacial water are vital for various biochemical reactions, but the molecular-level understanding of their property is very limited. We investigated the water structure at a zwitterionic lipid, phosphatidylcholine, monolayer/water interface using heterodyne-detected vibrational sum frequency generation spectroscopy. Isotopically diluted water was utilized in the experiments to minimize the effect of intra/intermolecular couplings. It was found that the OH stretch band in the Imχ⁽²⁾ spectrum of the phosphatidylcholine/water interface exhibits a characteristic double-peaked feature. To interpret this peculiar spectrum of the zwitterionic lipid/water interface, Imχ⁽²⁾ spectra of a zwitterionic surfactant/water interface and mixed lipid/water interfaces were measured. The Imχ⁽²⁾ spectrum of the zwitterionic surfactant/water interface clearly shows both positive and negative bands in the OH stretch region, revealing that multiple water structures exist at the interface. At the mixed lipid/water interfaces, while gradually varying the fraction of the anionic and cationic lipids, we observed a drastic change in the Imχ⁽²⁾ spectra in which spectral features similar to those of the anionic, zwitterionic, and cationic lipid/water interfaces appeared successively. These observations demonstrate that, when the positive and negative charges coexist at the interface, the H-down-oriented water structure and H-up-oriented water structure appear in the vicinity of the respective charged sites. In addition, it was found that a positive Imχ⁽²⁾ appears around 3600 cm^–1 for all the monolayer interfaces examined, indicating weakly interacting water species existing in the hydrophobic region of the monolayer at the interface. On the basis of these results, we concluded that the characteristic Imχ⁽²⁾ spectrum of the zwitterionic lipid/water interface arises from three different types of water existing at the interface: (1) the water associated with the negatively charged phosphate, which is strongly H-bonded and has a net H-up orientation, (2) the water around the positively charged choline, which forms weaker H-bonds and has a net H-down orientation, and (3) the water weakly interacting with the hydrophobic region of the lipid, which has a net H-up orientation