Developing a microfluidic platform for the investigation of biomimetic membranes interactions with antibiotics

该项目的主要目标是开发一种技术，用于研究重要的运输离子或分子如何与脂质膜相互作用。考虑的这种重要物质可以是离子、质子和抗生素分子。在哺乳动物和细菌细胞中，脂质膜构成细胞膜的主体。虽然这样的细胞也包含许多其他生物分子和蛋白质，影响分子与膜的相互作用，我们的目标是采取还原论的方法来理解膜相互作用的整体从下而上。通过首先将我们的膜模型简化为脂质膜，并首先描述脂质对膜相互作用的影响。该项目旨在利用微流体技术开发上述技术。我们将扩展实验室开发的现有微流体技术，如已发表的辛醇辅助脂质体组装，一种形成球形脂质膜（脂质体）的方法。我将设计和制造这种微流体设计的扩展，使我们能够研究在微流体网络中形成的脂质体。该项目进一步侧重于通过编写软件分析和创建自定义图像分析算法来开发用于脂质体研究的现有微流体技术。

The key objectives of the project are to develop a technique for investigating how important transporting ions or molecules interact with lipid membranes. Such important species for consideration may be ions, protons and antibiotic molecules. Lipid membranes constitute the bulk of the cellular membranes in both mammalian and bacterial cells. Although such cells also contain many other biological molecules and proteins which affect the interactions of molecules with the membrane, we aim to take a reductionist approach to understand membrane interactions in their entirety from the bottom up. By first simplifying our model of the membrane to just the lipid membrane and first characterizing just the affect of the lipids on membrane interactions. The project aims to develop such techniques listed above using microfluidics. We will extend already existing microfluidic techniques developed in the lab such as the published Octanol-assisted Liposome Assembly, a method to form spherical lipid membranes (liposomes). I will be designing and fabricating extensions to this microfluidic design which allows us to investigate the liposomes formed in the microfluidic network. The project further focuses on the development of the existing microfluidic techniques for liposome investigation by writing software analysis and creating custom image analysis algorithms.