Engineering lipid tubules using nano-sized building blocks: the combinatorial self-assembly of vesicles

Nano-sized lipid vesicles with tailored properties have been used as building blocks to generate lipid tubules between two glass surfaces. The tubules formed not only have defined orientation, width, and length, but they can also grow to be as long as 13 mm under ambient conditions, without external...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Lab on a chip 2008-02, Vol.8 (2), p.339-345
Main Authors: Tan, Yung-Chieh, Shen, Amy Q, Li, Yu, Elson, Elliot, Ma, Liang
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Coloring Agents - chemistry
Ethanol - chemistry
Lipids - chemistry
Lipids - radiation effects
Microfluidic Analytical Techniques - instrumentation
Microfluidic Analytical Techniques - methods
Nanotubes - chemistry
Nanotubes - radiation effects
Particle Size
RNA, Small Interfering - chemistry
Surface Properties
Temperature
Time Factors
Ultraviolet Rays
Unilamellar Liposomes - chemistry
Water - chemistry
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Summary:Nano-sized lipid vesicles with tailored properties have been used as building blocks to generate lipid tubules between two glass surfaces. The tubules formed not only have defined orientation, width, and length, but they can also grow to be as long as 13 mm under ambient conditions, without externally supplied flow, temperature control, or catalyzing agents. Tubule membrane and its internal aqueous content can be manipulated by controlling the combination of different vesicle's lipid composition and aqueous entrapment. This self-assembly process opens up new pathways for generating complicated and flexible architectures for use in biocompatible molecular and supramolecular engineering. We demonstrated these possibilities by generating tubules encapsulated with siRNA, tubules with multiple branches, and polymerized fluorescent tubules in a single-throughput self-assembly process.
ISSN:1473-0197
1473-0189
DOI:10.1039/b713930f