Nanoscale Lipid Vesicle Platform for Millions of Tests on One Chip
January 3, 2012 | Terry Sharrer
The ability to make incredibly small containers from phospholipids (liposomes) has been known since the early 1960’s, and has been used widely to deliver drugs or DNA into cells. Recently, however, a team at the University of Copenhagen has devised a method of immobilizing small unilamellar vesicles carrying one electrical charge on a glass surface, and then flow over another of oppositely charged nanocontainer, which causes the two to fuse and start a reaction between their cargoes. In this manner, it is possible to screen millions of reactions, using subattoliter amounts of reagents, on a single glass chip. MORE
Image Credit: Danish team involves fusion of nanovesicles carrying target and cargo reactants – Fotolia.com and Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News