KCS

A lipid bilayer is a critical component of all cell membranes, which interact with thousands of membrane-associated receptors, signaling molecules, etc. A supported lipid bilayer (SLB) system is a unique platform for constructing cell membrane on solid substrates such as glasses or semiconductors, without losing the fluidity of lipid bilayer. In our experiments, we employed SLB-gold nanoparticle conjugates as functionalized probes and total internal reflection microscopy (TIRM) as a analytical tool in our assays. This approach has a critical advantage of long-term use and more quantitative analysis comparing with assay methods based on fluorescence spectroscopy with a critical disadvantage of photobleaching.