A robust method for on-chip production and manipulation of lipid vesicles by inverted emulsion

Abstract

Lipid vesicles are important as minimal model systems for cellular compartmentalization. They drive major advances in deciphering biological mechanisms by molecular reconstitution; provide rational solutions for primitive compartmentalization in origin-of-life studies; form the basis of synthetic cells and drug delivery vehicles. The emulsion method is a well-established route for producing bilayer lipid vesicles. However, the application of this method in microfluidics requires complex and specialized machinery. The bulk method suffers from the need to physically manipulate the vesicles through oil layers for characterization that can damage the vesicles. Given this, we present a facile and robust method for on-chip production and manipulation of lipid vesicles by the emulsion method. We prepared a simple device that allows preparation, imaging, and collection of activated lipid vesicles. This technique combines minimal processing steps with maximum flexibility in lipid vesicle production and manipulation with direct imaging, thus fast-tracking production lines across disciplines.

Keywords: CFES; CP: biotechnology; GUVs; bottom-up synthetic biology; cell-free expression; inverted emulsion method; liposomes; membrane protein; on-chip; protein-lipid binding; synthetic cells.