Quantitative optical microscopy and micromanipulation studies on the lipid bilayer membranes of giant unilamellar vesicles.

LUIS A. BAGATOLLI; D. NEEDHAM

CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS OF LIPIDS

ELSEVIER IRELAND LTD

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2014 vol. 188 p. 99 - 99

0009-3084

his manuscript discusses basic methodological aspects of optical microscopy and micromanipulation methods to study membranes and reviews methods to generate giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs). In particular, we focus on the use of fluorescence microscopy and micropipet manipulation techniques to study composition-structure-property materials relationships of free-standing lipid bilayer membranes. Because their size (∼5-100 μm diameter) that is well above the resolution limit of regular light microscopes, GUVs are suitable membrane models for optical microscopy and micromanipulation experimentation. For instance, using different fluorescent reporters, fluorescence microscopy allows strategies to study membrane lateral structure/dynamics at the level of single vesicles of diverse compositions. The micropipet manipulation technique on the other hand, uses Hoffman modulation contrast microscopy and allows studies on the mechanical, thermal, molecular exchange and adhesive-intera