Biophysical Society Thematic Meeting - October 13-15, 2015

Biophysics of Proteins at Surfaces: Assembly, Activation, Signaling

Poster Abstracts

26-POS Board 26 Formation of Supported Lipid Bilayers of Charged E. coli Lipids on Modified Gold by Vesicle Fusion. Ileana F. Márquez , Marisela Vélez. ICP - CSIC, Madrid, Spain. We describe a simple way of fusing E. coli lipid vesicles onto a gold surface. Supported lipid bilayers on metal surfaces are of great interest for several reasons: transducing a biological signals to an electric readout, using surface analytical tools such as Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR), infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy, neutron reflectivity or electrochemistry. The most widely used method to prepare supported lipid membranes is fusion of preexisting liposomes. This fusion of lipid vesicles is quite efficient on hydrophilic surfaces such as glass, mica or SiO2., but it remains a challenge on metal surfaces such as gold, titanium oxide or indium tin oxide, particularly for vesicles containing charged lipids, as is the case of bacterial lipids. We describe a method based on modifying the gold surface with a Self-Assembled Monolayer (SAM) of mercaptopropionic acid and partial detergent solubilization of the liposomes. The formed bilayers were characterized using a Quartz Crystal Microbalance, Atomic Force Microscopy and Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleaching.

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