Biological applications of tethered bilayer lipid membranes

Lipid membranes have an essential role in most physiological processes including cell protection, cell-to-cell communication and regulation of intracellular signaling. These multiple roles of biological membranes prompted the study and the development of artificial lipid membranes with the primary aim to reconstitute the natural functions in vitro and understand the interaction between all membrane components at the molecular level. Tethered bilayer lipid membranes (tBLMs) are emerging as the ideal experimental platform for functional and structural studies on membrane-associated proteins due to their peculiar properties such as their stability and fluidity of both leaflets in the phospholipid bilayer. tBLMs have been used in many studies, ranging from the analysis of membrane structure and function, studies of the membrane-protein and membrane-peptide interactions, as well as applications as biosensors and energy generating devices. This review describes all the uses of tBLMs as a tool to investigate biological functions, pointing out limitations of this methodology and future applications once optimization of the technique will be achieved.