Developing a microfluidic platform for the investigation of biomimetic membranes interactions with antibiotics

The key objectives of the project are to develop a technique for investigating how important transporting ions or molecules interact with lipid membranes. Such important species for consideration may be ions, protons and antibiotic molecules. Lipid membranes constitute the bulk of the cellular membranes in both mammalian and bacterial cells. Although such cells also contain many other biological molecules and proteins which affect the interactions of molecules with the membrane, we aim to take a reductionist approach to understand membrane interactions in their entirety from the bottom up. By first simplifying our model of the membrane to just the lipid membrane and first characterizing just the affect of the lipids on membrane interactions.

The project aims to develop such techniques listed above using microfluidics. We will extend already existing microfluidic techniques developed in the lab such as the published Octanol-assisted Liposome Assembly, a method to form spherical lipid membranes (liposomes). I will be designing and fabricating extensions to this microfluidic design which allows us to investigate the liposomes formed in the microfluidic network. The project further focuses on the development of the existing microfluidic techniques for liposome investigation by writing software analysis and creating custom image analysis algorithms.