Automated Lipid Bilayer Formation using a PDMA Gasket

Abstract

Planar lipid bilayer membranes(BLMs) play important roles in studying ion channels, as well as in potential applications for drug discovery. Despite the importance of many practical applications using BLMs, membrane formation is still based on conventional methods invented by Montal and Mueller in 1960s. Although membranes can be simply reconstituted using the conventional technique, membranes should be created where experiments are conducted due to their mechanical instability. In our recent work a membrane formation technique using high melting temperature solvent mixture was devised by Jeon, et al.