What is it about?
By optical trapping of gold nanoparticles we established a local phase transition in a lipid vesicle and measured the consequent permeability. We found discrete localized permeability events imaged as de-quenching of encapsulated calcein as it left the vesicle interior. The leakage events lasted typically around 100ms with occasional events lasting up to a few seconds.
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Why is it important?
Implications in biological cell membranes : Phase segregation is ubiquitious in cellular membranes containing liquid disordered and ordered phases. Also, proteins function of e.g. ion channels has been shown to be sensitive to the composition of the surrounding lipid bilayer. Some studies have event shown that the lipid packing/order is different in the vicinity of proteins compared to further away from the transmembrane proteins. Therefore, domain interfaces are abundant in cell membranes.
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This page is a summary of: Local and transient permeation events are associated with local melting of giant liposomes, Soft Matter, January 2014, Royal Society of Chemistry,
DOI: 10.1039/c4sm00410h.
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Permeability of GUVs as a sensor for heating of optically trapped gold nanoparticles
Previous paper about local heating of GUVs where the goal was to quantify the heating of the trapped nanoparticle. No information regarding the nature of the permeability was obtained because we used a different permeability assay which was not as sensitive.
Local phase transitions to quantify the temperature of irradiated nanoparticles
A general lipid assay employing molecular partitioning and phase transitions to elucidate the temperature of irradiated nanoparticles
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