EAGER: Validating Atomic Force Microscopy Measurements of the Lipid Membrane Dipole Moment

在生物研究仪器开发和生命过程化学项目的共同资助下，化学测量和成像项目正在为莱斯大学的Jason Hafner教授提供EAGER奖，寻求表征生物膜等结构的新方法-支持活细胞许多关键生物功能的分子薄片。 虽然膜的外部电特性已经很好地理解，但它们的内部电特性还没有。 一个这样的内部性质是偶极电位，它产生于膜中的分子排列。虽然这种潜力已经研究了几十年，但它是膜的最不了解的方面之一。 目前还没有明确的测量这个电位的大小，甚至协议关于哪些组件的膜创建it. It已假设，这种潜在的显着影响膜生物学，但这种相关性尚未得到证实，因为目前还没有令人满意的方法来测量偶极电位。本计画将进一步发展最近发现的利用原子力显微镜（AFM）测量膜偶极电位的方法。 这些活动将导致定量工具来测量生物膜的重要但知之甚少的性质，许多关键生物功能和大多数药物分子的作用的位点。 学生将在实验研究和理论模拟方面得到跨学科的支持和培训。 该项目的研究成果和仪器概念将用于9年级综合物理和化学（IPC）教师培训计划在赖斯。 这项工作还将为哈夫纳教授实验室的暑期实习教师提供研究经验。

With co-funding from the Instrument Development for Biological Research and the Chemistry of Life Processes programs, the Chemical Measurement and Imaging program is supporting an EAGER award to Prof. Jason Hafner of Rice University, seeking new ways to characterize structures like biological membranes - the thin sheets of molecules that support many critical biological functions of living cells. While the external electrical properties of membranes are well understood, their internal electrical properties are not. One such internal property is the dipole potential, which arises from molecular alignment in the membrane. Although this potential has been studied for decades, it is among the least understood aspects of membranes. There is currently no definitive measure of the size of this potential, or even agreement about which components of the membrane create it. It has been hypothesized that this potential significantly affects membrane biology, but such a correlation has not been confirmed since there is currently no satisfactory way to measure the dipole potential. This project will further develop a recently discovered method to measure the membrane dipole potential using an atomic force microscope (AFM). These activities will result in a quantitative tool to measure an important yet poorly understood property of biological membranes, the site of many critical biological functions and the actions of most drug molecules. Students will be supported and trained in an interdisciplinary manner in both experimental research and theoretical simulations. The research results and instrumentation concepts from this project will be used in 9th grade Integrated Physics and Chemistry (IPC) teacher training programs at Rice. The work will also provide research experiences for summer teacher interns in Prof. Hafner's laboratory.