Facile generation of giant unilamellar vesicles using polyacrylamide gels.

ABSTRACT: Giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) are model cell-sized systems that have broad applications including drug delivery, analysis of membrane biophysics, and synthetic reconstitution of cellular machineries. Although numerous methods for the generation of free-floating GUVs have been established over the past few decades, only a fraction have successfully produced uniform vesicle populations both from charged lipids and in buffers of physiological ionic strength. In the method described here, we generate large numbers of free-floating GUVs through the rehydration of lipid films deposited on soft polyacrylamide (PAA) gels. We show that this technique produces high GUV concentrations for a range of lipid types, including charged ones, independently of the ionic strength of the buffer used. We de

SUBMITTER: Parigoris E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7075891 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature