Shape analysis of biomimetic and plasma membrane vesicles

Abstract

Giant membrane vesicles (GUVs) and Giant plasma membrane vesicles (GPMVs) are models for examining membrane properties. We attempted to conduct a comparative study of reduced volume of vesicles with different lipid compositions, solution symmetry, solution asymmetry, and membrane charge. The vesicular morphology is studied using three-dimensional visualization techniques. The vesicles may not be exactly similar to spheres, but they may have some fluctuations resulting in changes in their shape. To understand these shape deformations, we visualize them as confocal image stacks. Our experimental observations indicate that the charge of the membrane affects the deflation of the GUVs in the presence of trans-bilayer sugar asymmetries. The lipid bilayers of our GUVs contain a uniform distribution of the lipids in the two leaflets, which implies that the two leaflets have the same lipid composition and there is no asymmetries in this composition. However, they obtain trans-bilayer asymmetries through asymmetric adsorption or desorption layers of different solution compositions adjacent to each leaflet. The deformation of the GPMVs shapes extracted from cells with trans-bilayer buffer asymmetries and the composition asymmetries is also estimated and compared with biomimetic membranes.