Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Pérez-Isidoro, Rosendo
• Reyes-Figueroa, A.D.
• Ruiz-Suárez, J.C.

Titel

Ionic interactions determine the morphology of dried alkali/liposome suspension droplets

Ist Teil von

• Colloids and surfaces, B, Biointerfaces, 2017-12, Vol.160, p.473-482

Ort / Verlag

Netherlands: Elsevier B.V

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• [Display omitted] •Lipid/ionic interactions induce fractal patterns during drop evaporation.•Hofmeister sequence determines the affinity of cations to the DMPC membrane.•Small cations get trapped into the membrane and are not available to crystallize. We sought to understand why saline drops produce intriguing patterns when drying in the presence of zwitterionic liposomes. Specifically, we would like to comprehend why the nature of such patterns is hierarchically driven by the Hofmeister series. The liposome suspension is made of 1,2-dimyristoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DMPC) with alkali metal chlorides. A complexity analysis of the patterns gives a fractal dimension around 1.71, which means that the drying process resembles a DLA mechanism. A physicochemical study, including the determination of zeta potential, molecular dynamics simulations, microrheology, and calorimetry, supports the fact that electrostatic interactions among head groups of phospholipids with alkali cations are the driven forces behind the assembling of the observed structures. Moreover, we found that the morphology of the dried droplets is sensitive to the substrate. Our findings could be used in a biological context, for example, to characterize cells in ionic media.