Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Improving Droplet Interface Bilayers As Models For Cell Membranes, Graham Jeffery Taylor

Doctoral Dissertations

This work describes research aimed at improving the droplet interface bilayer (DIB) platform for creating and characterizing biologically relevant model cell membranes. Improvements are made possible in part through the development of a portable, compact platform for controlling temperature with DIBs. Feedback-controlled heating allows studies to be conducted across a range of temperatures, from ambient up to at least 80°C, and also provides new understanding of methods to form DIBs using mixtures of total lipids extracted from bacterial and eukaryotic cells. The membranes formed from total lipid extracts (TLE) are introduced along with evidence that model membranes formed using lipid …