Engineering Lipid Bilayer Membranes for Protein Studies

Abstract

Lipid membranes regulate the flow of nutrients and communication signaling between cells and protect the sub-cellular structures. Recent attempts to fabricate artificial systems using nanostructures that mimic the physiological properties of natural lipid bilayer membranes (LBM) fused with transmembrane proteins have helped demonstrate the importance of temperature, pH, ionic strength, adsorption behavior, conformational reorientation and surface density in cellular membranes which all affect the incorporation of proteins on solid surfaces. Much of this work is performed on artificial templates made of polymer sponges or porous materials based on alumina, mica, and porous silicon (PSi) surfaces. For example, porous silicon materials have high biocompatibility, biodegradability, and photoluminescence, which allow them to be used both as a support structure for lipid bilayers or a template to measure the electrochemical functionality of living cells grown over the surface as in vivo. The variety of these media, coupled with the complex physiological conditions present in living systems, warrant a summary and prospectus detailing which artificial systems provide the most promise for different biological conditions. This study summarizes the use of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) data on artificial biological membranes that are closely matched with previously published biological systems using both black lipid membrane and patch clamp techniques.

Tethered bilayer membranes as a complementary tool for functional and structural studies: The pyolysin case

“…However, while reconstituted, the protein function and structure change little, pointing to an irreversible nature of the rPLO reconstitution. The molecular basis of pH dependence has been extensively investigated for Listeriolysin O (LLO) [42] but pH mediated activity was also reported for other members of the CDCs family [43] Moreover, this result underlines the importance of tBLMs as a valid approach to study the modification of the activity of CDCs in function of external and internal factors including temperature, pH and ionic strength [44].…”

Effects of Pore Size and Tethering on the Diffusivity of Lipids Confined in Mesoporous Silica

“…[1] Mimicking these individual membrane functions in synthetic supported lipid bilayers (SLBs) is being explored for drug discovery, small molecule separations, targeted drug delivery, and catalysis. These biological membranes, coupled with numerous membrane associated proteins, control cell to cell signaling, selective membrane permeability, small molecule detection, and environmental sensing.…”

Flexible and Organic Neural Interfaces: A Review

“…The interest in such technologies arises from the intrinsic properties of organic materials, such as their flexibility [18] and the suitability in realizing all organic printed systems [19]. Moreover, there are many other interesting properties that make organic platform so appealing [20], including (i) transparency of the thin-film materials, which allows optical investigation of the tissue in direct contact with the sensor; (ii) polymers and molecules can be tuned to meet the desired specifications in different kind of sensors [21,22]; (iii) organic semiconductors are soft material that can be self-assembled and self-organized mimicking the biological structures [23,24]; (iv) organic compounds can be functionalized by means of bio-molecular groups thus promoting cell viability [25]; and (v) organic electronics devices and biosensors can be fabricated using natural, cheap, bio-degradable and bio-resorbable materials [26,27].…”