Effect of phospholipid chain length and saturation on the second virial coefficient of liposome: Optical bottle study

Abstract

A liposome is a spherical vesicle consisting of one or more lipid bilayers that are formed naturally in any biological system with membranes to carry out crucial processes such as exocytosis, endocytosis, and transport of materials within plasma membrane. Artificially prepared liposomes are widely studied as model membrane and drug delivery systems. Measurement of the isothermal compressibility of liposome solution allows the study on the interaction properties of liposomes with different known phospholipid chain length and saturation. Using Optical Bottle, a recently developed optical trapping method, isothermal compressibility of liposome solution was measured to determine the second virial coefficient. In this study, the effect of phospholipid chain length and saturation of phosphatidylglycerol-based liposomes on the second virial coefficients is investigated.