Multivalent Programmable Interactions Between Lipid Vesicles: Towards Responsive Soft Materials
type: CreativeWork
description: Lipid membranes and lipid vesicles have been studied extensively in the last 50 years in order to characterise their biological, chemical and physical properties. Such work is of interest from a fundamental biological perspective, but also due to the applications that their biocompatibility affords: in biotechnological, pharmaceutical, food science and cosmetic applications. From this work, it is clear that lipid membranes display a large number of remarkable traits: they can form a wide range of sizes and morphologies, are deformable and can be functionalised with a variety of structures. More recently, multivalent interactions have been exploited to drive self-assembly of nanoparticles, hard colloids and compliant units including emulsion droplets and lipid vesicles. By applying this to deformable lipid vesicles, formation of links between two membranes produces morphological changes unachievable in hard colloidal systems, and the liquid interface of liquid-phase bilayers allows for the diffusion of the multivalent constructs across the membrane of the lipid vesicle. Against this background of membrane science and multivalent interactions, this thesis develops new experimental approaches to exploit these extra degrees of freedom to develop novel lipid-based soft responsive materials with potential ’real-world’ applications, such as in molecular sensing. In Chapter 1, the motivations for this work are introduced, before introducing the requisite background literature and general experimental techniques in Chapters 2 and 3 respectively. In Chapter 4 we show a system of single lipid vesicles adhering to a flat supported lipid bilayer through multimeric multivalent interactions, which we study to characterise the morphological and mechanical changes of the vesicles in response to external ligands. We show that the mechanical properties of the vesicles, in particular their membrane tension, change dramatically on adhesion, and that the number of adhering vesicles is de…
abstract: Lipid membranes and lipid vesicles have been studied extensively in the last 50 years in order to characterise their biological, chemical and physical properties. Such work is of interest from a fundamental biological perspective, but also due to the applications that their biocompatibility affords: in biotechnological, pharmaceutical, food science and cosmetic applications. From this work, it is clear that lipid membranes display a large number of remarkable traits: they can form a wide range of sizes and morphologies, are deformable and can be functionalised with a variety of structures. More recently, multivalent interactions have been exploited to drive self-assembly of nanoparticles, hard colloids and compliant units including emulsion droplets and lipid vesicles. By applying this to deformable lipid vesicles, formation of links between two membranes produces morphological changes unachievable in hard colloidal systems, and the liquid interface of liquid-phase bilayers allows for the diffusion of the multivalent constructs across the membrane of the lipid vesicle. Against this background of membrane science and multivalent interactions, this thesis develops new experimental approaches to exploit these extra degrees of freedom to develop novel lipid-based soft responsive materials with potential ’real-world’ applications, such as in molecular sensing. In Chapter 1, the motivations for this work are introduced, before introducing the requisite background literature and general experimental techniques in Chapters 2 and 3 respectively. In Chapter 4 we show a system of single lipid vesicles adhering to a flat supported lipid bilayer through multimeric multivalent interactions, which we study to characterise the morphological and mechanical changes of the vesicles in response to external ligands. We show that the mechanical properties of the vesicles, in particular their membrane tension, change dramatically on adhesion, and that the number of adhering vesicles is de…
author: Amjad, Omar
language: en
keywords: Lipid Interfaces, Lipid Membranes, Lipid Vesicles, Liposomes, Ligand-Receptor Interactions, DNA-mediated Interactions, Programmable Materials, Responsive Materials, Adhesion, Gels, Soft Matter, Self-Assembly, Rheology, Magnetic-Tweezers, Differential Dynamic Microscopy, Microfluidics, Microfluidics for Lipid Vesicle Production, Sensing
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/89146635-c50d-4427-b18e-9527b9389ae5/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2019-07-02
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:17Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.51277