Cell membranes form a natural protective boundary around cells and their organelles.Ion channels housed within these membranes comprise 1.5% of the human genomeand carry out essential cell signalling roles. As such, ion channels are importantpharmacological targets and a better understanding of their function would aid drugdiscovery as well as drug toxicity testing. Although there are methods of studying ionchannels, including patch clamping and artificial lipid bilayer system, a number ofdifficulties limit their experimental efficiency and practicality. In the case of artificialbilayer architectures, reconstitution of membrane proteins into bilayers is challenging. Here we demonstrate the design and development of a scalable dropletinterface bilayer system for single ion channel electrophysiology. A combination ofthis platform and the ion channel reconstitution method addresses the proteinintegration problem by improving the probability of channel incorporation to 29%.Single channel recordings of gramicidin, alamethicin and alpha hemolysin wereacquired for proof of concept work while eukaryotic ion channel BK electrophysiology provides evidence of the success of the project objectives. We anticipate that the suggested reconstitution method in conjunction with the platform developed in this research can be extended to study other pharmacologically relevant human ion channels.
Date of Award | 10 Jun 2020 |
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Original language | English |
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Awarding Institution | - University Of Strathclyde
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Sponsors | EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) |
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Supervisor | Edward Rowan (Supervisor) & Michele Zagnoni (Supervisor) |
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