Membrane biophysics articles within Nature Chemistry

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  • News & Views |

    Liquid–liquid phase separation (LLPS) within cells is a captivating phenomenon known to aid the organization of cellular components; however, its complex kinetics have remained a puzzle. Now, a new study elucidates the crosstalk between the phase state of an encapsulating membrane and LLPS dynamics.

    • Rumiana Dimova

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Native mass spectrometry has been used to interrogate both biased signalling and allosteric modulation of the β1-adrenergic receptor. Simultaneously capturing the effects of ligand binding and receptor coupling to different G proteins has enabled the relative importance of specific interactions to be investigated.

    • Hsin-Yung Yen
    • , Idlir Liko
    •  & Carol V. Robinson

  • Article |

    Combinatorial high-throughput methodologies can accelerate screening and discovery in biochemistry and biomedical sciences, but they often rely on large-scale analyses, making them time-consuming and expensive. Now, DNA-mediated fusion of single liposomes has been shown to enable the spatially resolved and parallel cargo delivery of subattolitre volumes in a stochastic order of succession.

    • Mette Galsgaard Malle
    • , Philipp M. G. Löffler
    •  & Nikos S. Hatzakis

  • Article |

    Voltage imaging is a powerful technique for studying electrical signalling in neurons. A palette of bright and sensitive voltage indicators has now been developed via enzyme-mediated ligation and Diels–Alder cycloaddition. Among these, a far-red indicator faithfully reports neuronal action potential dynamics with an excitation spectrum orthogonal to optogenetic actuators and green/red-emitting biosensors.

    • Shuzhang Liu
    • , Chang Lin
    •  & Peng Zou

  • Article |

    Small liposomes of uniform sizes are valuable tools for studying membrane biology and developing drug-delivery vehicles. Now, a DNA-assisted sorting technique has been shown to produce multiple species of monodispersed liposomes with mean diameters below 150 nm in a scalable manner. This approach has enabled the high-resolution analyses of curvature-dependent membrane protein activities.

    • Yang Yang
    • , Zhenyong Wu
    •  & Chenxiang Lin

  • Article |

    Lipid membranes—which separate cells and organelles from their environment—experience tension during various cell processes; however, measuring membrane tension is notoriously difficult. Now, a new fluorescent, mechanosensitive membrane probe called FliptR has been developed. FliptR enables simple, direct membrane tension measurements in cellular and artificial membranes.

    • Adai Colom
    • , Emmanuel Derivery
    •  & Aurélien Roux

  • Article |

    Cell-sized asymmetric giant lipid vesicles containing a very small amount of organic solvent have now been formed via inhomogeneous break-up of a lipid microtube that was generated by applying a jet flow to an asymmetric planar lipid bilayer. The asymmetric giant vesicles were used to investigate the dynamic responses of lipid molecules and the effect of asymmetry on biochemical reactions.

    • Koki Kamiya
    • , Ryuji Kawano
    •  & Shoji Takeuchi

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