Molecular dynamics simulations of lipid composition and its impact on structural and dynamic properties of skin membrane

The stratum corneum (SC) plays the most important role in the absorption of topical and transdermal drugs. In this study, we developed a multi-layered SC model using coarse-grained molecular dynamics (CGMD) simulations of ceramides, cholesterol, and fatty acids in equimolar proportions, starting from two different initial configurations. In the first approach, all ceramide molecules were initially in the hairpin conformation, and the membrane bilayers were pre-formed. In the second approach, ceramide molecules were introduced in either the hairpin or splayed conformation, with the lipid molecules randomly oriented at the start of the simulation. The aim was to evaluate the effects of lipid chain length on the structural and dynamic properties of SC. By incorporating ceramides and fatty acids of different chain lengths, we simulated the SC membrane in healthy and diseased states. We calculated key structural properties including the thickness, normalized lipid area, lipid tail order parameters, and spatial ordering of the lipids from each system. The results showed that systems with higher ordering and structural integrity contained an equimolar ratio of ceramides (chain length of 24 carbon atoms), fatty acids with chain lengths ≥ of 20 carbon atoms, and cholesterol. In these systems, strong apolar interactions between the ceramide and fatty acid long acyl chains restricted the mobility of the lipid molecules, thereby maintaining a compact lipid headgroup region and high order in the lipid tail region. The simulations also revealed distinct flip-flop mechanisms for cholesterol and fatty acid within the multi-layered membrane. Cholesterol is mostly diffused through the tail-tail interface region of the membrane and could flip-flop in the same bilayer. In contrast, fatty acids flip-flopped between adjacent leaflets of two bilayers in which the tails crossed the thinner headgroup region of the membrane. To conclude, our SC model provides mechanistic insights into lipid mobility and is flexible in its design and composition of different lipids, enabling studies of varying skin conditions.