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Updated: Sep 4, 2026
Bridging the Bio-Electronic Interface with Biofabrication
Published on: June 6, 2012
Interaction of low-molecular-weight chitosan with mimic membrane studied by electrochemical methods and surface
Fan Yang1, Xiaoqiang Cui, Xiurong Yang
1State Key Laboratory of Electroanalytical Chemistry and National Analytical Research Center of Electrochemistry and Spectroscopy, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jilin 130022, Changchun, PR China.
Abstract:
Chitosan has shown its potential as a non-viral gene carrier and an adsorption enhancer for subsequent drug delivery to cells. These results showed that chitosan acted as a membrane perturbant. However, there is currently a lack of direct experimental evidence of this membrane perturbance effect, especially for chitosans with low molecular weight (LMW). In this report, the interaction between a lipid (didodecyl dimethylammonium bromide; DDAB) bilayer and chitosan with molecular weight (MW) of 4200 Da was studied with cyclic voltammetry (CV), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and surface plasmon resonance (SPR). A lipid bilayer was formed by fusion of oppositely charged lipid vesicles on a mercaptopropionic acid (MPA)-modified gold surface to mimic a cell membrane. The results showed that the LMW chitosan could disrupt the lipid bilayer, and the effect seemed to be in a concentration-dependent manner.
