Ligand-Receptor Contact Interactions Using Self-Assembled Bilayer Lipid Membranes

Biological membranes play a crucial role in signal transduction and information processing as well as in energy conversion. This is owing to the fact that most physiological activities involve some kind of lipid bilayer-based receptor-ligand contact interactions. There are many outstanding examples such as ion sensing, antigen-antibody binding, and ligand/voltage--gated channels, to name a few. One approach to study these interactions in vitro is facilitated by employing artificial bilayer lipid membranes (BLMs). We have focused the efforts on ion and/or molecular selectivity and specificity using newly available self-assembled BLMs on solid support (i.e., s-BLMs), whose enhanced stability greatly aids in research areas of membrane biochemistry, biophysics and cell biology as well as in biosensor designs and molecular devices development. In this paper, our current work along with the experiments carried out in close collaboration with others on s-BLMs will be presented.