Morphological Analysis of the Interaction of Charged Surfactant Vesicles (SVs) with Human Cultured Cells

Abstract

We analyzed the binding and fusogenic properties of surfactant vesicles (SVs), composed of ionic and nonionic surfactants and cholesterol, with the surface of different human lymphoid cells. The influence of charge on SVs-cell interaction was evaluated by monitoring the presence of fluorescent sodium calcein artificially entrapped in the vesicles using optical fluorescence microscopy and laser scanning confocal microscopy. Our results clearly indicate that only negatively charged vesicles bind and fuse with the plasma membrane of human lymphoid cells, and the number of SVs bound to the cell surface was variable among the positive cells. Thin section electron microscopy illustrated that the fusogenic events of SVs with the cell plasma membrane mostly occurred at smooth and nonvillous regions of the cell surface. Taken together, our results suggest that binding and fusion of SVs with the cell plasma membrane might be dependent on interactions with specific membrane components that preferentially recognize negatively charged SVs.