Effect of the Membrane Composition of Giant Unilamellar Vesicles on Their Budding Probability: A Trade-Off between Elasticity and Preferred Area Difference.

Life (Basel)

Department of Earth, Environmental and Physical Sciences-DEEP Sciences, University of Siena, Pian dei Mantellini 44, 53100 Siena, Italy.

Published: June 2021

The budding and division of artificial cells engineered from vesicles and droplets have gained much attention in the past few decades due to an increased interest in designing stimuli-responsive synthetic systems. Proper control of the division process is one of the main challenges in the field of synthetic biology and, especially in the context of the origin of life studies, it would be helpful to look for the simplest chemical and physical processes likely at play in prebiotic conditions. Here we show that pH-sensitive giant unilamellar vesicles composed of mixed phospholipid/fatty acid membranes undergo a budding process, internally fuelled by the urea-urease enzymatic reaction, only for a given range of the membrane composition. A gentle interplay between the effects of the membrane composition on the elasticity and the preferred area difference of the bilayer is responsible for the existence of a narrow range of membrane composition yielding a high probability for budding of the vesicles.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8306738PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/life11070634DOI Listing

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