Metal-Organic Frameworks as Anchors for Giant Unilamellar Vesicle Immobilization

12 September 2024, Version 1
This content is a preprint and has not undergone peer review at the time of posting.

Abstract

Giant Unilamellar Vesicles (GUVs) are ideal for studying cellular mechanisms due to their cell-mimicking morphology and size. The formation, stability, and immobilization of these vesicles are crucial for drug delivery and bioimaging studies. Separately, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are actively researched owing to their unique and varied properties, yet little is known about the interaction between MOFs and phospholipids. This study investigates the influence of the metal-phosphate interface on the formation, size distribution, and stability of GUVs with different lipid compositions. GUVs were electroformed in the presence of a series of MOFs. The results show Al, Zn, Cu, Fe, Zr, and Ca metal centers of MOFs can coordinate to phospholipids on the surface of GUVs, leading to the formation of functional GUV@MOF constructs, with stablilities over 12 hours. Macroscopically, society has seen biology (people, plants, microbes) interacting with inorganic materials all the time. We now explore how microscopic biological models behave in the presence of inorganic constructs. This research opens new avenues for advanced biomedical applications interacting tailored frameworks with liposomes.

Keywords

Metal-Organic Frameworks
Giant Unilamellar Vesicles
Lipid-Metal Interactions

Supplementary materials

Title
Description
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Supporting information document
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Experimental Procedures and presentation of supporting data
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Supporting video 1 SV1
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GUV@MOF MIL-53(Al)
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Supporting video 2 SV2
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GUV@MOF MIL-100(Al)
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Supporting video 3 SV3
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GUV@MOF MIL-53(Fe)
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Supporting video 4 SV4
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GUV@MOF MIL-100(Fe)
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Supporting video 5 SV5
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GUV@MOF CuBDC
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Supporting video 6 SV6
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GUV@MOF HKUST-1
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Supporting video 7 SV7
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GUV@MOF UiO-66
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Supporting video 8 SV8
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GUV@MOF MOF-808
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Supporting video 9 SV9
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GUV@MOF MOF-177 (Zn)
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Supporting video 10 SV10
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GUV@MOF CaBDC
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