(121f) Creating Well-Defined, Tailorable Polymer-Tethered Lipid Bilayers

Polymer-tethered lipid bilayers are becoming widely used as models for biological membranes. In contrast to solid supported planar bilayers that have a typical substrate ? bilayer separation distance of only 1 ? 2 nm, these water-swollen polymer systems can be used to create lubricating cushions with substantially larger separation distances, which are often necessary for large domains of incorporated transmembrane proteins. We have created a well-defined polymer-tethered system in which we can predictably tailor the system properties such as separation distance and lateral mobility according to the requirements of the specific application and transmembrane protein of interest. The behavior of these mixed lipopolymer/lipid monolayers at the air ? water interface in combination with theoretical polymer predictions was used to understand the polymer conformation in the water subphase. Fluorescence microscopy was used to monitor the macroscopic homogeneity and lateral mobility of the final bilayer. Atomic force microscopy of the bilayer performed in aqueous environment was used to observe the microscopic homogeneity and to confirm the predicted separation distances.