title: Supported lipid bilayer repair mediated by AH peptide.
abstract: The adsorption and fusion of small unilamellar lipid vesicles on silica-based substrates such as glass is a common method used to fabricate supported lipid bilayers. Successful bilayer formation depends on a number of experimental conditions as well as on the quality of the vesicle preparation. Inevitably, a small fraction of unruptured vesicles always remains in a supported bilayer, and this kind of defect can have devastating influences on the morphological and electrical properties of the supported bilayer when used as a biosensing platform. In this paper, a simple method is reported to improve the completeness of supported bilayers by adding a vesicle rupturing peptide as a final step in the fabrication process. Peptide treatment reduces the fraction of unruptured vesicles to less than 1%, as determined by epifluorescence microscopy and quartz crystal microbalance-dissipation experiments. This step can easily be incorporated into existing procedures for preparing high-quality supported lipid bilayers.
authors.affiliation: School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue 639798, Singapore. njcho@ntu.edu.sg and Centre for Biomimetic Sensor Science, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Drive 637553, Singapore.
authors.forename: Min Chul
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden.
authors.forename: Anders
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gunnarsson
authors.affiliation: School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue 639798, Singapore. njcho@ntu.edu.sg and Centre for Biomimetic Sensor Science, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Drive 637553, Singapore.
authors.forename: Seyed R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Tabaei
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden.
authors.forename: Fredrik
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Höök
authors.affiliation: School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue 639798, Singapore. njcho@ntu.edu.sg and Centre for Biomimetic Sensor Science, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Drive 637553, Singapore.
authors.forename: Nam-Joon
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Cho
mesh_terms: D008051:Lipid Bilayers; D010455:Peptides / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D008051:Lipid Bilayers; D010455:Peptides