The lipid bilayer membrane and its protein constituents

Imaging Lipid Microdomains in a Microfluidic Bilayer Lipid Membrane Chip

A microfluidic bilayer lipid membrane (BLM) system supporting correlated opto-electrical membrane characterization has been developed and applied to the imaging of phase-separated lipid microdomains by confocal microscopy. The device consists of a microfluidic network supporting rapid perfusion fabricated in a thermoplastic substrate, bonded to a thin PVDC partition and supported by a thin cove...

Membrane Electrochemistry: Electrochemical Processes in Bilayer Lipid Membrane

Correct folding of the beta-barrel of the human membrane protein VDAC requires a lipid bilayer.

Spontaneous membrane insertion and folding of beta-barrel membrane proteins from an unfolded state into lipid bilayers has been shown previously only for few outer membrane proteins of Gram-negative bacteria. Here we investigated membrane insertion and folding of a human membrane protein, the isoform 1 of the voltage-dependent anion-selective channel (hVDAC1) of mitochondrial outer membranes. T...

The protein-tethered lipid bilayer: a novel mimic of the biological membrane.

A new concept of solid-supported tethered bilayer lipid membrane (tBLM) for the functional incorporation of membrane proteins is introduced. The incorporated protein itself acts as the tethering molecule resulting in a versatile system in which the protein determines the characteristics of the submembraneous space. This architecture is achieved through a metal chelating surface, to which histid...

The pathway of ligand entry from the membrane bilayer to a lipid G protein-coupled receptor

The binding process through the membrane bilayer of lipid-like ligands to a protein target is an important but poorly explored recognition process at the atomic level. In this work we succeeded in resolving the binding of the lipid inhibitor ML056 to the sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor 1 (S1P1R) using unbiased molecular dynamics simulations with an aggregate sampling of over 800 μs. The bindin...