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Updated: Jul 6, 2026

Biomembrane Fabrication by the Solvent-assisted Lipid Bilayer (SALB) Method
Published on: December 1, 2015
Bile salt-induced vesicle-to-micelle transition in catanionic surfactant systems: steric and electrostatic
Lingxiang Jiang1, Ke Wang, Manli Deng
1Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, State Key Laboratory for Structural Chemistry of Unstable and Stable Species, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, PR China.
Abstract:
The vesicle-to-micelle transition (VMT) was realized in catanionic surfactant systems by the addition of two kinds of bile salts, sodium cholate (SC) and sodium deoxycholate (SDC). It was found that steric interaction between the bile salt and catanionic surfactant plays an important role in catanionic surfactant systems that are usually thought to be dominated by electrostatic interaction. The facial amphiphilic structure and large occupied area of the bile salt are crucial to the enlargement of the average surfactant headgroup area and result in the VMT. Moreover, bile salts can also induce a macroscopic phase transition. Freeze-fracture transmission electron microscopy, dynamic light scattering, isothermal titration calorimetry, and absorbance measurements were used to follow the VMT process.
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