TY - JOUR
T1 - Assembly, Morphology, Diffusivity, and Indentation of Hydrogel-Supported Lipid Bilayers
AU - Shoaib, Tooba
AU - Nalam, Prathima C.
AU - He, Yichen
AU - Chen, Yuting
AU - Espinosa-Marzal, Rosa M.
N1 - Support to T. S. by the Fulbright Program, U.S. Department of State, is acknowledged. The authors acknowledge technical support and use of facilities at the Institute of Genomic Biology at UIUC and thank Prof. Thanh Huong Nguyen and Prof. Benito Marinas for providing access to dynamic light scattering and to a probe sonicator, both at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UIUC, and Dr. Lydia Kisley from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UIUC for her support on the FRAP measurements.
PY - 2017/7/18
Y1 - 2017/7/18
N2 - Recognizing the limitations of solid-supported lipid bilayers to reproduce the behavior of cell membranes, including bendability, transmembrane protein inclusion, and virus entry, this study describes a novel biomimetic system for cell membranes with the potential to overcome these and other limitations. The developed strategy utilizes a hydrogel with tunable mechanical behavior that resembles those of living cells as the soft support for the phospholipid bilayer, while a polyelectrolyte multilayer film serves as an intermediate layer to facilitate the self-assembly of the lipid bilayer on the soft cushion. Quartz crystal microbalance studies show that, upon coming into contact with the polyelectrolyte film, vesicles fuse and rupture to yield a robust lipid bilayer. Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching confirms the formation of a membrane, while atomic force microscopy shows a low adhesion between the indenting probe and the bilayer. More importantly, in comparison to the solid-supported lipid bilayer, the response of this biomimetic system to nanoindentation demonstrates its increased mechanical stability and bendability when assembled on a soft cushion. Hence, the developed hydrogel-supported lipid bilayers can mimic biomechanical properties of cell membranes, which will enable scientists to study and to understand biophysicochemical interactions between cell membranes and extracellular entities.
AB - Recognizing the limitations of solid-supported lipid bilayers to reproduce the behavior of cell membranes, including bendability, transmembrane protein inclusion, and virus entry, this study describes a novel biomimetic system for cell membranes with the potential to overcome these and other limitations. The developed strategy utilizes a hydrogel with tunable mechanical behavior that resembles those of living cells as the soft support for the phospholipid bilayer, while a polyelectrolyte multilayer film serves as an intermediate layer to facilitate the self-assembly of the lipid bilayer on the soft cushion. Quartz crystal microbalance studies show that, upon coming into contact with the polyelectrolyte film, vesicles fuse and rupture to yield a robust lipid bilayer. Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching confirms the formation of a membrane, while atomic force microscopy shows a low adhesion between the indenting probe and the bilayer. More importantly, in comparison to the solid-supported lipid bilayer, the response of this biomimetic system to nanoindentation demonstrates its increased mechanical stability and bendability when assembled on a soft cushion. Hence, the developed hydrogel-supported lipid bilayers can mimic biomechanical properties of cell membranes, which will enable scientists to study and to understand biophysicochemical interactions between cell membranes and extracellular entities.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85025449176&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85025449176&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1021/acs.langmuir.7b01062
DO - 10.1021/acs.langmuir.7b01062
M3 - Article
C2 - 28635292
AN - SCOPUS:85025449176
SN - 0743-7463
VL - 33
SP - 7105
EP - 7117
JO - Langmuir
JF - Langmuir
IS - 28
ER -