Towards the Understanding of Lipid Membrane Formation

Abstract

How can we understand the formation mechanism of various morphologies of biomembrane? We are trying to understand the formation mechanism from the view point of soft matter physics, i.e., from physical properties of lipid assembly. We have especially studied the mechanism of giant vesicles formation from the lipid film by means of time-resolved Small-Angle X-ray Scattering, and the results suggest that the morphologies of lipid membrane strongly depend on the kinetics of the formation process. Thus, the observation of formation kinetics of various membrane morphologies should become more important to understand the biomembrane formation from soft matter physics. For observing the kinetics of membrane self-assembly, time-resolved measurements of Small-Angle Neutron Scattering and Neutron Spin Echo spectroscopy will make a significant contribution and will shed light on the various morphologies of biomembrane.