Direct visualization of dispersed lipid bicontinuous cubic phases by cryo-electron tomography

Davide Demurtas (), Paul Guichard, Isabelle Martiel, Raffaele Mezzenga, Cécile Hébert and Laurent Sagalowicz ()
Additional contact information
Davide Demurtas: Interdisciplinary Centre for Electron Microscopy, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL)
Paul Guichard: Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC), School of Life Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL)
Isabelle Martiel: ETH Zurich
Raffaele Mezzenga: ETH Zurich
Cécile Hébert: Interdisciplinary Centre for Electron Microscopy, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL)
Laurent Sagalowicz: Nestlé Research Center, Vers-Chez-Les-Blanc

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Bulk and dispersed cubic liquid crystalline phases (cubosomes), present in the body and in living cell membranes, are believed to play an essential role in biological phenomena. Moreover, their biocompatibility is attractive for nutrient or drug delivery system applications. Here the three-dimensional organization of dispersed cubic lipid self-assembled phases is fully revealed by cryo-electron tomography and compared with simulated structures. It is demonstrated that the interior is constituted of a perfect bicontinuous cubic phase, while the outside shows interlamellar attachments, which represent a transition state between the liquid crystalline interior phase and the outside vesicular structure. Therefore, compositional gradients within cubosomes are inferred, with a lipid bilayer separating at least one water channel set from the external aqueous phase. This is crucial to understand and enhance controlled release of target molecules and calls for a revision of postulated transport mechanisms from cubosomes to the aqueous phase.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9915 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms9915

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9915

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().