1. Photolipid Bilayer Permeability is Controlled by Transient Pore Formation
- Author
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Stefanie D. Pritzl, David B. Konrad, Theobald Lohmüller, Dirk Trauner, Patrick Urban, James A. Frank, and Alexander Prasselsperger
- Subjects
Liposome ,Membrane permeability ,Bilayer ,Vesicle ,02 engineering and technology ,Surfaces and Interfaces ,010402 general chemistry ,021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology ,Condensed Matter Physics ,01 natural sciences ,0104 chemical sciences ,chemistry.chemical_compound ,Membrane ,chemistry ,Phosphatidylcholine ,Electrochemistry ,Biophysics ,General Materials Science ,0210 nano-technology ,Lipid bilayer ,Isomerization ,Spectroscopy - Abstract
Controlling the release or uptake of (bio-) molecules and drugs from liposomes is critically important for a range of applications in bioengineering, synthetic biology, and drug delivery. In this paper, we report how the reversible photoswitching of synthetic lipid bilayer membranes made from azobenzene-containing phosphatidylcholine (azo-PC) molecules (photolipids) leads to increased membrane permeability. We show that cell-sized, giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) prepared from photolipids display leakage of fluorescent dyes after irradiation with UV-A and visible light. Langmuir-Blodgett and patch-clamp measurements show that the permeability is the result of transient pore formation. By comparing the trans-to-cis and cis-to-trans isomerization process, we find that this pore formation is the result of area fluctuations and a change of the area cross-section between both photolipid isomers.
- Published
- 2020