Biomimetic membrane arrays on cast hydrogel supports.
2011
Lipid bilayers are intrinsically fragile and require I mechanical support in technical applications based on biomimetic membranes. Tethering the lipid bilayer membranes to solid substrates, either directly through covalent or ionic substrate-lipid links or indirectly on substrate-supported cushions, provides mechanical support but at the cost of small molecule transport through the membrane―support sandwich. To stabilize biomimetic membranes while allowing transport through a membrane―support sandwich, we have investigated the feasibility of using an ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE)/hydrogel sandwich as the support. The sandwich is realized as a perforated surface-treated ETFE film onto which a hydrogel composite support structure is cast We report a simple method to prepare arrays of lipid bilayer membranes with low intrinsic electrical conductance on the highly permeable, self-supporting ETFE/hydrogel sandwiches. We demonstrate how the ETFE/ hydrogel sandwich support promotes rapid self-thinning of lipid bilayers suitable for hosting membrane-spanning proteins.
Keywords:
- Correction
- Source
- Cite
- Save
- Machine Reading By IdeaReader
28
References
20
Citations
NaN
KQI