Effect of the polar headgroup of phospholipids on their interaction with actin

Abstract It is generally admitted that actin filaments are anchored to a membrane by membranar actin-binding-proteins. However, we found that actin may also interact directly with membrane phospholipids. The actin–phospholipid complex has been investigated at the air–water interface using a film balance technique. In order to probe the effect of the phospholipid headgroup on the actin–phospholipid interaction, we focus mainly on phospholipids that have the same acyl chain length but different headgroups. For all the phospholipids, the apparent area per molecule (the total surface divided by the number of lipid molecules) increases after the injection of the protein into the subphase, which suggests an intercalation of actin between the phospholipid molecules. This effect seems to be more important for DMPE and DMPS than for DMPG, suggesting that the headgroup plays an important role in this intercalation. The critical surface pressure associated to the liquid expanded–liquid condensed (LE-LC) phospholipid transition increases with the concentration of G-actin and thus suggests that G-actin acts as an impurity, simply competing as a surfactant at the air–water interface. On the other hand, F-actin affects the LE to LC transition of phospholipids differently. In this case, the LE to LC transition is broader and F-actin slightly decreases the critical surface pressure, which suggests that electrostatic interactions are involved.