Cellular membrane curvature is involved in many biological processes, with several proteins shown to be responsive to differing curvatures of membranes. But while the diversity of membrane shapes has been implicated in many biomolecular interactions, there few model membrane systems have a curved surface topography. In order to study the interactions of biomolecules with curved lipid membranes, we have investigated the use of vertical arrays of nanowires (NW) as supporting surfaces for lipid bilayers. The surfaces are covered with vertically aligned NWs that are of nano-range diameters and micro-range lengths. We formed lipid bilayers on gallium phosphide NW arrays via in-situ fusion of vesicles containing different lipid compositions. Using fluorescence confocal microscopy and fluorescence recovery after photobleaching, we determined the continuity and topography of the bilayer on the surface formed by the planar array of NW tips and found the lipid bilayers to conform to the structured surface. Thus, the high aspect ratio of the NW forest resulted a large surface area covered by a curved bilayer. We used this curved supported bilayer to investigate the binding of two membrane-associated proteins. Since arrays of nanowires are finding their way into biological applications such as measurements of cellular force1 and transfection2,3 the hybrid nanowire-bilayer platform shown here can be used to study the influence of lipid membrane curvature on biomolecule adhesion and interaction, as well as further development of nanosensors.
References:1.Hallstrom, W., Lexholm, M., Suyatin, D.B., Hammarin, G., Hessman, D., Samuelson, L., Montelius, L., Kanje, M., Prinz, C.N. Nano Lett. 2010, 10, 782.; 2. Kim, W., Ng, J.K., Kunitake, M.E., Conklin, B.R., Yang, P.D. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2007, 129, 7228.; 3. Persson, H., Beech, J.P., Samuelson, L., Oredsson, S., Prinz, C.N., Tegenfeldt, J.O. Nano Res. 2012, 5, 190.
aleksandra.dabkowska@fkem1.lu.se
