Supported lipid bilayers, tethered lipid vesicles, and vesicle fusion investigated using gravimetric, plasmonic, and microscopy techniques

This article summarizes our most recent contributions to the rapidly growing field of supported lipid assemblies with emphasis on current studies addressing both fundamental and applied aspects of supported lipid bilayer (SLB) and tethered lipid vesicles (TLVs) to be utilized in sensing applications. The new insights obtained from combining the quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring technique with surface plasmon resonance are described, and we also present recent studies in which nanoplasmonic sensing has been used in studies of SLBs and TLVs. To gain full control over the spatial arrangement of TLVs in both two and three dimensions, we have developed a method for site-selective and sequence-specific sorting of DNA-tagged vesicles to surfaces modified with complementary DNA. The combination of this method with nanoplasmonic sensing formats is covered as well as the possibility of using DNA-modified vesicles for the detection of unlabeled DNA targets on the single-molecule level. Finally, a new method for membrane fusion induced by hybridization of vesicle-anchored DNA is demonstrated, including new results on content mixing obtained with vesicle populations encapsulating short, complementary DNA strands.