Gaseous delivery of volatile anesthetics to a planar membrane

Abstract

Volatile anesthetics are an important class of compounds that have become ubiquitous in healthcare. Current model systems used to explore the effects of these compounds in humans typically use tissue slices or cell culture. We are developing a simple protein-free assay to safely test the dose-dependent effects of volatile anesthetics on the fusion of liposomes to planar lipid bilayers. As an initial model, we use nitrogen gas bubbled through a concentrated ethanol solution to deliver ethanol vapor to an enclosed bilayer chamber, where the gaseous ethanol partitions into the chamber solution.