Functional Tethered Bilayer Lipid Membranes

Abstract

Tethered bilayer lipid membranes (tBLMs) constitute a novel experimental concept with very promising features for fundamental biophysical investigations of the general correlation between structural properties and functional processes in model membrane systems. Moreover, these architectures offer a robust platform for membrane-based bio-sensing principles that could eventually result in the design and fabrication of stable and cheap membrane chips. We first discuss a few synthetic strategies that lead to various types of architectures with unprecedented electrical properties: some of these tBLMs show an electrical resistance that exceeds even that of the best model membrane known so far, i.e., the bimolecular lipid membrane (BLM). The reconstitution of a synthetic ionophore, i.e., the carrier valinomycin, allows one to study the K⁺-selective and reversible increase of the membrane conductivity by more than 4 orders of magnitude. Next, the incorporation of various types of integrin receptors into the tethered bilayer membranes will be briefly discussed as an example of the versatility of this model system in membrane binding assays. And finally, the photopolymerization of polymerizable lipids will be introduced as a way to generate patterned bilayers that can serve as the basic structure for the construction of membrane chips for massive paralleled detection of membrane processes.