Solid supported lipid bilayers from artificial and natural lipid mixtures – long-term stable, homogeneous and reproducible

Abstract

Supported lipid bilayers (SLBs) are increasingly accepted as experimental models to study the behaviour of membrane active proteins like α-synuclein, as they can easily be investigated by surface sensitive analytical methods. In this study we show the assembly and long-term stability of SLBs on glass substrates by vesicle deposition from various lipid mixtures. For the investigation of the SLBs we use supercritical angle fluorescence microscopy and spectroscopy. We concentrate on the important factors for reproducible bilayer assembly like the purification of the substrate and the handling of the lipid vesicle suspension. By using a new combined steady-state/flow approach we were able to create homogeneous SLBs with a long-term stability over seven days, which to our knowledge have not been reported in the literature so far, including SLBs containing up to 70% negatively charged lipids, SLBs from artificial lipid mixtures containing cholesterol as well as SLBs from natural lipid extracts.