New Giant Unilamellar Vesicles

Giant Unilamellar Vesicles are a choice system for studying and micro-manipulating lipid bilayers under an optical microscope, providing information on structure or mechanical properties.

Inverse phase method

We have discovered that a simple modification of the well-known method of giant vesicle electroformation allows for a direct addition of water-soluble species to the phospholipid bilayers, and consequently into the vesicles being formed, bringing thus an alternate method for solving the recurrent problem in vesicle formation by electroformation (Fig. 1) [1].

Figure 1: Electroformation of giant unilamellar vesicles from an inverse phase precursor, allowing the direct incorporation of water- soluble species inside and outside the vesicle.

PVA gel method

We have shown that a wide variety of lipids or lipid mixtures can grow into GUVs in absence of electric field, by swelling lipid precursor films on top of a dried polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) gel surface in a swelling buffer (Fig. 2) [2].
Not only charged lipids, but also salted buffers can be used without restriction.

Figure 2: Giant unilamellar vesicles growing on a PVA gel, confocal image. In green the PVA gel, in red the bilayer.