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...

The organization of the lipid headgroups in a neutral model membrane is studied by atomistic simulations in the fluid lamellar phase, La . In particular, we report the results obtained for a fully hydrated 1-stearoyl-2-docosahexaenoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine lipid bilayer at room temperature. The orientational distribution of the lipid dipole moments with respect to the membrane normal pres...

Lanthanide salts have been studied for many years, primarily in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) experiments of mixed lipid-protein systems and more recently to study lipid flip-flop in model membrane systems. It is well recognised that lanthanide salts can influence the behaviour of both lipid and protein systems, however a full molecular level description of lipid-lanthanide interactions is s...

Protein-lipid interaction and bilayer regulation of membrane protein functions are largely controlled by the hydrophobic match between the transmembrane (TM) domain of membrane proteins and the surrounding lipid bilayer. To systematically characterize responses of a TM helix and lipid adaptations to a hydrophobic mismatch, we have performed a total of 5.8-mus umbrella sampling simulations and c...

Numerous reports have established that lipid peroxidation contributes to cell injury by altering the basic physical properties and structural organization of membrane components. Oxidative modification of polyunsaturated phospholipids has been shown, in particular, to alter the intermolecular packing, thermodynamic, and phase parameters of the membrane bilayer. In this study, the effects of oxi...

Factor VIII (FVIII) is a key protein in blood coagulation, deficiency or malfunction of which causes Haemophilia A. The sole cure for this condition is intravenous administration of FVIII, whose membrane-bound structure we have studied by Cryo-electron microscopy and image analysis. Self-assembled lipid nanotubes were optimised to bind FVIII at close to native conditions. The tubes diameter was...

Establishing supported lipid bilayers with biologically relevant composition, including transmembrane proteins and various classes of lipids, presents a significant challenge. We describe a generic and facile approach to the production of fluid polymer-supported lipid bilayers that allows for the incorporation of a wide variety of lipids and transmembrane proteins. The method is based on the fo...

The membranes of human red blood cells (RBCs) are a composite of a fluid lipid bilayer and a triangular network of semiflexible filaments (spectrin). We perform cellular microrheology using the dynamic membrane fluctuations of the RBCs to extract the elastic moduli of this composite membrane. By applying known osmotic stresses, we measure the changes in the elastic constants under imposed strai...