Giant unilamellar vesicles electroformed from native membranes and organic lipid mixtures under physiological conditions

L.R. MONTES; A. ALONSO; F. GOÑI; LUIS A. BAGATOLLI

BIOPHYSICAL JOURNAL

CELL PRESS

Lugar: United States; Año: 2007 vol. 93 p. 3548 - 3548

0006-3495

n recent years, giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) have become objects of intense scrutiny by chemists, biologists, and physicists who are interested in the many aspects of biological membranes. In particular, this "cell size" model system allows direct visualization of particular membrane-related phenomena at the level of single vesicles using fluorescence microscopy-related techniques. However, this model system lacks two relevant features with respect to biological membranes: 1), the conventional preparation of GUVs currently requires very low salt concentration, thus precluding experimentation under physiological conditions, and 2), the model system lacks membrane compositional asymmetry. Here we show for first time that GUVs can be prepared using a new protocol based on the electroformation method either from native membranes or organic lipid mixtures at physiological ionic strength. Additionally, for the GUVs composed of native membranes, we show that membrane proteins and glycos