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Fusing artificial cell compartments and lipid domains using optical traps: a tool to modulate membrane composition and phase behaviour
journal contribution
posted on 2021-03-05, 17:03 authored by Adithya Vivek, Guido Bolognesi, Yuval ElaniNew technologies for manipulating biomembranes have vast potential to aid the understanding of biological phenomena, and as tools to sculpt novel artificial cell architectures for synthetic biology. The manipulation and fusion of vesicles using optical traps is amongst the most promising due to the level of spatiotemporal control it affords. Herein, we conduct a suite of feasibility studies to show the potential of optical trapping technologies to (i) modulate the lipid composition of a vesicle by delivering new membrane material through fusion events and (ii) manipulate and controllably fuse coexisting membrane domains for the first time. We also outline some noteworthy morphologies and transitions that the vesicle undergoes during fusion, which gives us insight into the mechanisms at play. These results will guide future exploitation of laser-assisted membrane manipulation methods and feed into a technology roadmap for this emerging technology.
Funding
Engineering Living/Synthetic Hybrid Assemblies (LSHAs) as Functional Units for Synthetic Biology
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Find out more...An engineering rulebook for interfacing living and non-living cells
UK Research and Innovation
Find out more...History
School
- Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering
Department
- Chemical Engineering
Published in
MicromachinesVolume
11Issue
4Publisher
MDPI AGVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Rights holder
© The authorsPublisher statement
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by MDPI under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0). Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Acceptance date
2020-03-28Publication date
2020-04-07Copyright date
2020ISSN
2072-666XeISSN
2072-666XPublisher version
Language
- en