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Updated: Aug 11, 2026

Assembly of Cell Mimicking Supported and Suspended Lipid Bilayer Models for the Study of Molecular Interactions
Published on: August 3, 2021
Transition from unilamellar to bilamellar vesicles induced by an amphiphilic biopolymer
Jae-Ho Lee1, Vivek Agarwal, Arijit Bose
1Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742-2111, USA.
Abstract:
We report some unusual structural transitions upon the addition of an amphiphilic biopolymer to unilamellar surfactant vesicles. The polymer is a hydrophobically modified chitosan and it embeds its hydrophobes in vesicle bilayers. We study vesicle-polymer mixtures using small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) and cryotransmission electron microscopy (cryo-TEM). When low amounts of the polymer are added to unilamellar vesicles of ca. 120 nm diameter, the vesicle size decreases by about 50%. Upon further addition of polymer, lamellar peaks are observed in the SANS spectra at high scattering vectors. We show that these spectra correspond to a co-existence of unilamellar and bilamellar vesicles. The transition to bilamellar vesicles as well as the changes in unilamellar vesicle size are further confirmed by cryo-TEM. A mechanism for the polymer-induced transitions in vesicle morphology is proposed.
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