Question

You have a cup of vegetable oil and a vial full of normal phospholipids. What would you predict would happen if you dropped the phospholipids into the cup of vegetable oil

Answer 1

The vegetable oil is made up of chains of long fatty acids. These long chains of fatty acids are non-polar in nature, i.e, they do not interact through ionic forces rather by covalent forces. The phospholipids are also long chain fatty acids with an ionic head. The mixing of the vial of phospholipid in vegatable oil will lead to the formation of a micelle where the lipophilic ends of the phospholipid will be on the outside and the lipophobic end will be towards the centre of the micelle.

Answer 2

On dropping the phospholipids into a cup containing vegetable oil, the phospholipids would tend to form a sphere with the hydrophilic head protruding inside the sphere.

Further Explanation:

An important component of cell membranes is phospholipids which are types of lipids. They are amphiphilic in nature and can form lipid bilayers. A phospholipid composed of two fatty acids and a phosphate group. The fatty acids form the tails in the phospholipid structure while the phosphate group forms the head. The tail is hydrophobic in nature whereas the head is hydrophilic. These components are joined to each other through a glycerol molecule.

The amphipathic or amphiphilic nature implies that the compound possesses properties of being both water-loving (hydrophilic) and fat-loving (lipophilic) or water-repelling (hydrophobic). The head region of a phospholipid contains a negative charge due to the presence of a phosphate group attached to glycerol. The tail region has two fatty acid chains which avoid interacting with water. On placing the phospholipids in an aqueous solution, the fatty acid tails aggregate together to restrict their interaction with molecules of water. The hydrophobic interactions are responsible for such aggregation which is key interactions for the formation of phospholipid bilayers. In the bilayer, the head is facing outwards while the tails are facing inside the bilayer to avoid any interaction with the aqueous environment.

Here, when the phospholipids come in contact with the vegetable oil, the phospholipids tend to aggregate as a sphere. This is because vegetable oil is fatty in nature and therefore, is hydrophobic. The head region is hydrophilic and would like to have the least interaction with the hydrophobic vegetable oil. Therefore, in order to repel the hydrophobic interactions, the head or the hydrophilic part of the phospholipid would aggregate in the interior of the sphere while the tail portion would interact with vegetable oil facing outwards in the solution.

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Answer Details:

Grade: High School

Chapter: Phospholipids

Subject: Biology

Keywords:

Phospholipids, amphipathic, amphiphilic, hydrophobic, hydrophilic, water-loving, lipophilic, water-repelling, head region, tail region, phospholipid bilayer, cell membrane.