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Biophysics of Proteins at Surfaces: Assembly, Activation, Signaling
Poster Abstracts
26-POS
Board 26
Formation of Supported Lipid Bilayers of Charged E. coli Lipids on Modified Gold by
Vesicle Fusion.
Ileana F. Márquez
, Marisela Vélez.
ICP - CSIC, Madrid, Spain.
We describe a simple way of fusing E. coli lipid vesicles onto a gold surface. Supported lipid
bilayers on metal surfaces are of great interest for several reasons: transducing a biological
signals to an electric readout, using surface analytical tools such as Surface Plasmon Resonance
(SPR), infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy, neutron reflectivity or electrochemistry. The
most widely used method to prepare supported lipid membranes is fusion of preexisting
liposomes. This fusion of lipid vesicles is quite efficient on hydrophilic surfaces such as glass,
mica or SiO2., but it remains a challenge on metal surfaces such as gold, titanium oxide or
indium tin oxide, particularly for vesicles containing charged lipids, as is the case of bacterial
lipids. We describe a method based on modifying the gold surface with a Self-Assembled
Monolayer (SAM) of mercaptopropionic acid and partial detergent solubilization of the
liposomes. The formed bilayers were characterized using a Quartz Crystal Microbalance, Atomic
Force Microscopy and Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleaching.