Animation of Bilayer Diffusion

This movie shows the dynamic properties of a phospholipid molecule in a bilayer above the transition temperature. Note how the phospholipid molecule (yellow) is free to move (diffuse) within one half of a bilayer. Remember that the molecule can not move from this half of the bilayer to the other half (flip-flop). The movie is based on a molecular model of the bilayer generated by molecular dynamic calculations(Heller et al. J. Phys. Chem.97 8343 (1993)).