| Description |
Molecular interactions that occur at phospholipid membranes play major roles in a variety of biologically relevant processes ranging from drug and toxin accumulation to cell signaling and immune responses. Typical methods for investigating molecular interactions with phospholipid bilayers fail to provide insight into structural changes that occur upon binding with the bilayer. Raman scattering is a well-established technique that is compatible with aqueous dispersions and can provide both quantitative information, as well as insight into structural changes. Raman scattering is, however, a weak phenomenon, making detection from single planar supported bilayers or individual phospholipid vesicle bilayers challenging. In this work, we address the sensitivity challenge by forming supported phospholipid bilayers by vesicle fusion to the polar high surface areas of bare silica- and nitrile derivitized- porous chromatographic silica particles. Confocal Raman microscopy is employed here to study the structure of the formed supported phospholipid bilayers. The similar physical characteristics of the assembled within-particle supported bilayers to those measured in free-solution vesicle bilayers make them attractive model membrane systems for a variety of biologically relevant experiments. To test this utility, prepared supports were used for the label-free quantification of both concanavalin A binding to membrane-localized mannose ligands and glucagon like peptide-1, a signaling peptide, accumulation in supported bilayers of varied phospholipid composition. |
