Session A8 - Focus Session: Neutron Scattering and Other Studies of Phospholipids.
FOCUS session, Monday morning, March 22
510A, Palais des Congres
Unilamellar vesicles (ULVs) are single-bilayer shells with radii commonly between 10 and 100 nm, and are widely used as model membranes, drug delivery systems, microreactors and substrates for a variety of enzymes and proteins. A common method of making ULVs is the extrusion of multilamellar vesicles (MLVs) through synthetic membranes of known pore size. These extruded ULVs are invariably unstable and in due time, revert back to MLVs.
Over the years there have been reports of the spontaneous formation of stable ULVs in surfactant, lipid, and lipid/detergent mixtures. These ULVs have sometimes been shown to be monodisperse and their radii were found, almost without exception, to vary with concentration. We have carried-out small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) experiments on a biomimetic system composed of the phospholipids dimyristoyl and dihexanoyl phosphorylcholine (DMPC and DHPC, respectively). Doping DMPC/DHPC multilamellar vesicles with either the negatively charged lipid dimyristoyl phosphorylglycerol (DMPG, net charge -1) or the divalent cation, calcium (Ca2+) leads to the spontaneous formation of monodisperse unilamellar vesicles whose radii are concentration independent, in contrast to previous experimental observations.