Lipid bilayer formation by contacting monolayers in a microfluidic device for membrane protein analysis.

摘要: Artificial planar lipid bilayers are a powerful tool for the functional study of membrane proteins, yet they have not been widely used due to their low stability and reproducibility. This paper describes an accessible method form bilayer, simply by contacting two monolayers assembled at interface between water organic solvent in microfluidic chip. The containing phospholipids was confirmed be bilayer capacitance measurement measuring ion channel signal from reconstituted antibiotic peptides. We present different designs formation. One equips circular wells connected, which water/solvent/water formed injecting droplet into each well. Another cross-shaped channel. In latter design, formation sectional area controlled external syringe pumps. Both methods extremely simple reproducible, es...