Issue 2, 2008

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

Abstract

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.

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

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
11 Sep 2007
Accepted
16 Nov 2007
First published
12 Dec 2007

Lab Chip, 2008,8, 339-345

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

Y. Tan, A. Q. Shen, Y. Li, E. Elson and L. Ma, Lab Chip, 2008, 8, 339 DOI: 10.1039/B713930F

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