6533b7cffe1ef96bd1259766

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Polymerization of Lipid and Lysolipid Like Diacetylenes in Monolayers and Liposomes

subject

description

The bilayer type lipid membrane has a variety of important functions that are necessary in order to sustain life. A lot of these functions have been studied with artificial model membranes such as black lipid membranes (BLM) or liposomes. A great disadvantage of all these models is their instability — BLM for instance can only exist for minutes or hours and only under the presence of water. Therefore, it was the aim of this work to produce simple model membranes that can retain their structure under a variety of test conditions. The route chosen to obtain such membranes was through the polymerization of lipid and lysolipid like molecules in monolayers at the gas-water interface or in liposomes. After polymerization the lipid molecules are bound to each other by covalent bonds and a much greater stability of BLM or liposomes can be expected.