Hemifusion of giant unilamellar vesicles with planar hydrophobic surfaces: a fluorescence microscopy study.

ABSTRACT: Vesicle adhesion and fusion to interfaces are frequently used for the construction of biomimetic surfaces in biosensors and drug delivery. Ubiquitous in cell biology, vesicle fusion involves the transformation of two separate membranes into one contiguous lipid bilayer. In distinction, the deposition of vesicle membranes to hydrophobic surfaces requires the transformation of a lipidic bilayer into a monomolecular layer - a topologically distinct process termed hemifusion. Here, we used hydrophobically terminated self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on solid surfaces to track the hemifusion of fluorescently labeled giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) at the single vesicle level with video time resolution (≈53 ms). We observed that a dilute monolayer, consisting of lipid extracted from the outer G

SUBMITTER: Zan GH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4222682 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature