Effect of Counter Electrode in Electroformation of Giant Vesicles
Electroformation of cell-sized lipid membrane vesicles (giant vesicles, GVs), from egg yolk phosphatidylcholine, was examined varying the shape of the counter electrode. Instead of a planar ITO (indium tin oxide) electrode commonly used, platinum wire mesh was employed as a counter electrode facing lipid deposit on a planar formation electrode. The modification did not significantly alter GV formation, and many GVs of 30–50 μm, some as large as 100 μm, formed as with the standard setup, indicating that a counter electrode does not have to be a complete plane. When the counter electrode was reduced to a set of two parallel platinum wires, GV formation deteriorated. Some GVs formed, but only in close proximity to the counter electrode. Lower electric voltage with this setup no longer yielded GVs. Instead, a large onion-like multilamellar structure was observed. The deteriorated GV formation and the formation of a multilamellar structure seemed to indicate the weakened effect of the electric field on lipid deposit due to insufficient coverage with a small counter electrode. Irregular membranous objects formed by spontaneous swelling of lipid without electric voltage gradually turned into multilamellar structure upon following application of voltage. No particular enhancement of GV formation was observed when lipid deposit on a wire formation electrode was used in combination with a large planar counter electrode.
Studying antibiotic–membrane interactions via X-ray diffraction and fluorescence microscopy
Antibiotic drug resistance is a serious issue for the treatment of bacterial infection. Understanding the resistance to antibiotics is a key issue for developing new drugs. We used penicillin and sulbactam as model antibiotics to study their interaction with model membranes. Cholesterol was used to target the membrane for comparison with the well‐known insertion model. Lamellar X‐ray diffraction (LXD) was used to determine membrane thickness using successive drug‐to‐lipid molar ratios. The aspiration method for a single giant unilamellar vesicle (GUV) was used to monitor the kinetic binding process of antibiotic–membrane interactions in an aqueous solution. Both penicillin and sulbactam are found positioned outside the model membrane, while cholesterol inserts perpendicularly into the hydrophobic region of the membrane in aqueous solution. This result provides structural insights for understanding the antibiotic–membrane interaction and the mechanism of antibiotics.
Resonant Auger decay study of C1s -> pi* core-excited OCS
The present work aims at characterizing short-lived C1s((-1)) pi*((1)) core-excited states of the OCS molecule based on the analysis of the vibrational fine structure and lineshape profiles of the high-resolution resonant Auger decay spectra recorded at the excitation energies along the C1s -> pi* resonance in the binding energy region 15-19eV. Very different behavior in terms of lineshape and resonant enhancement is observed for the (A) over tilde, (B) over tilde and (C) over tilde final states. This is explained by (1) the variation in the C-O bond lengths for the states involved in the electronic relaxation and (2) different contributions in terms of Mulliken population to the molecular orbitals determining the electronic character of the corresponding states. Since the final-state geometries are known from a number of previous experiments and ab initio calculations, the geometry of the C1s((-1)) pi*((1)) intermediate states can be predicted in analogy with e.g. the N-2, CO2 and N2O molecules. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. (Less)