High Throughput Formation of Sub-million Lipid Membrane Arrays with an Asymmetric Lipid Composition

We present a novel method to form more than 10,000 asymmetric lipid-bilayer membranes at a time on micro-chamber arrays. In our method, the arrayed asymmetric lipid-bilayers, where lipid compositions are different between inner and outer leaflets, are formed by injecting several kinds of liquids into a micro-device that has hydrophilic-in-hydrophobic surfaces. The lipid compositional asymmetry is an intrinsic property of bio-membranes, and therefore, this platform extends the versatility of artificial lipidbilayer system, which had been limited to symmetric-bilayer formation, and could contribute to understand the role of lipid compositional asymmetry in cell physiology.