The electrophoretic mobilities of multilamellar phosphatidylserine vesicles were measured in solutions containing monovalent cations, and the ³ potentials, the electrostatic potentials at the hydrodynamic plane of shear, were calculated from the Helmholtz-Smoluchowski equation. In the presence of 0.1 M lithium, sodium, ammonium, potassium, rubidium, cesium, tetraethylammonium, and tetramethyl-ammonium chloride, the ³ potentials were -60, -62, -72, -73, -77, -80, -82, and -91 mV, respectively. Similar results were obtained with phosphatidylglycerol vesicles; different results were obtained with cardiolipin, phosphatidylinositol, and phosphatidic acid vesicles. The phosphatidylserine results are interpreted in terms of the Stern equation, a combination of the Gouy equation from the theory of the diffuse double layer, the Boltzmann relation, and the Langmuir adsorption isotherm. Evidence is presented that suggests the hydrodynamic plane of shear is 2 Å from the surface of the membrane in solutions containing the alkali metal cations. With this assumption, the intrinsic association constants of the above monovalent cations with phosphatidylserine are 0.8, 0.6,0.17,0.15,0.08, 0.05,0.03, and 0 M-1 respectively. The validity of this approach was tested in two ways. First, the ³ potentials of vesicles formed from mixtures of phosphatidylserine and a zwitterionic lipid, phosphatidylcholine, were measured in solutions containing different concentrations of sodium. All the data could be described by the Stern equation if the “relaxation” of the ionic atmosphere, which is predicted by classic electrostatic and hydrodynamic theory to occur at low salt concentrations and high potentials, was circumvented by using only large (diameter >13 μm) vesicles for these measurements. Second, the fluorescent probe 2-(p-toluidinyl)naphthalene-6-sulfonate was used to estimate the potential at the surface of phosphatidylserine and phosphatidylglycerol vesicles sonicated in 0.1 M NaCl. Reasonable agreement with the predicted values of the surface potential was obtained. © 1979, American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.
