Chiral Lipid Tubules

12-Hydroxystearic acid lipid tubes under various experimental conditions

“…The literature reporting on the formation of supramolecular hollow tube architectures based on amphiphilic molecules is markedly increasing both from experimental and theoretical points of view [1][2][3][4], in particular owing to various technological reasons such as their use as templates or vectors for drug delivery [5,6]. Lipid tubes consist of membranes (bilayers) that may be packed in a concentric fashion with a cylindrical curvature.…”

“…There are a limited number of natural and synthetic lipids that can self-assemble into tubular structures, among which are glycolipids [7,8] and their bola-form derivatives [9] and phospholipids [6]. Most often, the tube-forming lipids are chiral molecules.…”

Molecular Self-Assembly into One-Dimensional Nanotube Architectures and Exploitation of Their Functions

“…64 It has been reported experimentally and theoretically that chiral amphiphiles tend to pack at non-zero angles with nearest neighbors and eventually to result in coiled or tubular molecular assemblies. 51,67,68 The CD results mentioned above support that a bent structure of the glycolipid 13 has a relatively stronger tendency to form chiral molecular packing as compared with that of 12 and 14. 66 The nanotube structures thus form in such a way that the solid bilayer membranes coil into helical ribbons and subsequently the helical pitch of the ribbon reduces or the helical ribbon width widens (Figure 3a).…”

Synthesis and Characterization of Silica Nanotubes with Radially Oriented Mesopores

“…This discrepancy may suggest that the orientation and packing of the surfactant in this particular synthesis system has been changed in such a way that the interdigitated surfactants packed in the lipid tube are re-assembled to form rod-type micelles with a diameter larger than the distance between bilayers. [18,22,[31][32][33][34] …”