Formation of supported lipid membranes onto solid surfaces: Effect of substrate, lipid, electrolyte and external factors

Artificial lipid membranes are useful model systems for many processes taking place at the cell membrane. When supported into solid materials, they have the potential to generate biosensing platforms of enhanced sensitivity. Moreover, lipid-coated nanostructured materials can be used for controlled drug delivery purposes giving the high drug loading capacity of the nanostructured system, whose release could be modulated by the supported lipid bilayer. In this work, we address different strategies for forming planar lipid layers onto solid surfaces, namely vesicle fusion, surface functionalization by self-assembled monolayers, solvent exchange and interactions with fusing agents [1,2]. Specifically, we focus on the effect of the morphology of the substrate, lipid type, solvent, fusing agent and buffer ionic strength. A versatile surface-sensitive technique quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation (QCM-D) is used, highligthing its usefulness as a tool to monitor phase transitions in solid-supported lipid layers.

[1] P. Losada-Pérez, M. Korshid, T. Robijns, C. Hermans, M. Peeters, K. L. Jiménez-Monroy, L. T. N. Truong, P. Wagner, Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces 123C, 938 (2014).
[2] P. Losada-Pérez, M. Khorshid, and F. U. Renner, Plos One 11, e0163518 (2016).