Rapid fabrication of teflon apertures by controlled high voltage pulses for formation of free standing planar lipid bilayer membrane
Biomedical Microdevices, cilt.23, sa.1, 2021 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 23 Sayı: 1
- Basım Tarihi: 2021
- Doi Numarası: 10.1007/s10544-021-00553-4
- Dergi Adı: Biomedical Microdevices
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus, Biotechnology Research Abstracts, CINAHL, Compendex, EMBASE, INSPEC, MEDLINE
- Anahtar Kelimeler: High voltage transformer, Lipid bilayer, Micromachining, Micropore, OmpF porin, PTFE, Single channel electrophysiology
- Bilecik Şeyh Edebali Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Free standing artificial lipid bilayers are widely used in the study of biological pores. In these types of studies, the free standing planar lipid bilayer is formed over a micron-sized aperture consisting of either polymer such as Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE, Teflon) or glass. Teflon is chemically inert, has a low dielectric constant, and has a high electrical resistance which combined allow for obtaining low noise recordings. This study investigates the reproducible generation of micropores in the range of 50–100 microns in diameter in a Teflon film using a high energy discharge set-up. The discharger set-up consists of a microprocessor, a transformer, a voltage regulator, and is controlled by a computer. We compared two approaches for pore creation: single and multi-pulse methods. The results showed that the multi-pulse method produced narrower aperture size distributions and is more convenient for lipid bilayer formation, and thus would have a higher success rate than the single-pulse method. The bilayer stability experiments showed that the lipid bilayer lasts for more than 33 h. Finally, as a proof-of-concept, we show that the single and multi-channel electrophysiology experiments were successfully performed with the apertures created by using the mentioned discharger. In conclusion, the described discharger provides reproducible Teflon-pores in a cheap and easy-to-operate manner.