Smoothed orientational order profile of lipid bilayers by 2H-nuclear magnetic resonance

A new method has been developed to determine the complete orientational order profile of lipid bilayers using 2H-NMR. The profile is obtained from a single powder spectrum of a lipid which has a saturated chain fully deuteriated. The smoothed order profile is determined directly from the normalized dePaked spectrum assuming a monotonic decrease of the order along the acyl chain. The oscillatory variations of the order at the beginning of the chain are not described by this method. However the smoothed order profile reveals in a straightforward way the crucial features of the anisotropic order of the bilayer