Membrane structure and assembly articles within Nature Chemistry

Featured

  • Article |

    The kinetics of liquid–liquid phase separation (LLPS) in cell-like confinements remains poorly understood. Now it has been shown that it involves complex interplay between the incipient phases and the membrane boundary, which arrests phase coarsening, deforms the membrane and couples LLPS with lipid phase separation.

    • Wan-Chih Su
    • , James C. S. Ho
    •  & Atul N. Parikh

  • Perspective |

    Droplet interface bilayers (DIBs) are a type of artificial bilayer that can act as cell membrane mimics. This Perspective surveys how DIBs can be used to mimic key cellular features (such as bilayer asymmetry) and processes (such as drug movement), and discusses challenges that need to be overcome to enable DIBs to reach their full potential as biomimetic model membranes.

    • Elanna B. Stephenson
    • , Jaime L. Korner
    •  & Katherine S. Elvira

  • Article |

    Responsive hydrogels are of interest for a range of potential applications, including microscale soft robotic and biomedical devices. Now, a versatile fabrication approach has been developed to prepare patterned, multi-material and multi-responsive hydrogels. Pre-gel droplets are connected through lipid bilayers in predetermined architectures and photopolymerized to yield continuous hydrogel structures that respond to a variety of stimuli.

    • Florence G. Downs
    • , David J. Lunn
    •  & Hagan Bayley

  • Article |

    Controlling liposome shape, arrangement and dynamics is important for biophysical studies and synthetic biology applications. Now, using a family of reconfigurable DNA nanocages as templates, spherical, tubular, toroidal and helical liposomes with predefined geometry have been produced. DNA-guided membrane fusion and bending is also demonstrated.

    • Zhao Zhang
    • , Yang Yang
    •  & Chenxiang Lin

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