Rheological droplet interface bilayers (rheo-DIBs): Probing the unstirred water layer effect on membrane permeability via spinning disk induced shear stress
posted on 2018-02-02, 15:50authored byNathan E. Barlow, Guido Bolognesi, Stuart Haylock, Anthony J. Flemming, Nicholas J. Brooks, Laura M.C. Barter, Oscar Ces
A new rheological droplet interface bilayer (rheo-DIB) device is presented as a tool to apply shear stress on biological lipid membranes. Despite their exciting potential for affecting high-throughput membrane translocation studies, permeability assays conducted using DIBs have neglected the effect of the unstirred water layer (UWL). However as demonstrated in this study, neglecting this phenomenon can cause significant underestimates in membrane permeability measurements which in turn limits their ability to predict key processes such as drug translocation rates across lipid membranes. With the use of the rheo-DIB chip, the effective bilayer permeability can be modulated by applying shear stress to the droplet interfaces, inducing flow parallel to the DIB membranes. By analysing the relation between the effective membrane permeability and the applied stress, both the intrinsic membrane permeability and UWL thickness can be determined for the first time using this model membrane approach, thereby unlocking the potential of DIBs for undertaking diffusion assays. The results are also validated with numerical simulations.
Funding
The research leading to these results has received funding from the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under REA grant agreement no 607466. This research was funded by EPSRC grants: EP/J017566/1, EP/L015498/1, EP/J021199/1 and EP/K503733/1.
History
School
Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering
Department
Chemical Engineering
Published in
Scientific Reports
Volume
7
Issue
1
Citation
BARLOW, N.E. ... et al, 2017. Rheological droplet interface bilayers (rheo-DIBs): Probing the unstirred water layer effect on membrane permeability via spinning disk induced shear stress. Scientific Reports, 7, Article number: 17551.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/
Acceptance date
2017-12-01
Publication date
2017-12-14
Copyright date
2017
Notes
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Nature Publishing Group under the Creative Commons 4.0 International Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/