An award is made to the State University of New York at Binghamton to develop a high throughput microfluidic instrument for constructing customizable vesicles with asymmetric lipid distributions. Such vesicles are superior to existing liposomes because they can be tailored to exactly replicate natural membranes and are therefore more physiologically relevant. The innovations provided by the instrument will have a broad impact on fundamental biofilm and membrane biology research. In particular, the physiologically relevant vesicles will enable studies that are impossible with current liposome technology. The interdisciplinary nature of this project provides an excellent training opportunity for students at all levels. Biologists and engineers often do not possess even the most fundamental skills in the others' discipline, limiting the ability to take on important research questions. This gap will be addressed by providing students with the opportunity to develop their interdisciplinary skills while contributing to the objectives of this project. Students at all levels will integrate with their cross disciplinary colleagues in the planning and execution of experiments and receive training in the laboratory techniques used by their research counterparts. To support interdisciplinary skills development in the wider community, a website will be created that provides instruction on protocols relevant to microfluidics, biofilms, and general laboratory practice. This website will be targeted to individuals with no background in the relevant discipline. It will also be used to disseminate the new instrument. This project will assist in establishing the formation of a Biofilm Microfluidics Initiative at SUNY Binghamton, which will tackle fundamental questions in the biofilms community with the aid of novel microfluidic tools.
The instrument will produce physiologically relevant synthetic vesicles to enable fundamental membrane biology research. The capabilities of the instrument will be demonstrated by using the synthetic vesicles to study the role of outer membrane vesicles in biofilm formation. Bacterial biofilms are ubiquitous in nature and have a large impact on human health and industry. It is imperative to understand the processes that contribute to the development of biofilm structure so that they can be exploited to control biofilm growth. This objective would not be achievable using traditional liposomes because they do not adequately mimic natural vesicles. Therefore they cannot be used to study complex phenomena where subtle differences in lipid composition and architecture are important. Emerging technologies are unable to synthesize uniform, unilamellar, asymmetric vesicles with controlled size at high throughput. The ability of the instrument to produce synthetic vesicles possessing all of these features is a paradigm shifting advancement in membrane biology and biofilm research. Long term, the vesicles built using the instrument have the potential to be used in vaccine development and as delivery vehicles for antimicrobial agents. As part of the instrument development, important fundamental issues relevant to microscale multiphase fluid flows will also be addressed. These include: flow focusing and interfacial stability, timescales for lipid self assembly, and emulsion kinematics.
