Wrapping of Microparticles by Floppy Lipid Vesicles
Hendrik T. Spanke, Robert W. Style, Claire François-Martin, Maria Feofilova, Manuel Eisentraut, Holger Kress, Jaime Agudo‐Canalejo, Eric R. Dufresne
Abstract
Lipid membranes, the barrier defining living cells and many of their subcompartments, bind to a wide variety of nano- and micrometer sized objects. In the presence of strong adhesive forces, membranes can strongly deform and wrap the particles, an essential step in crossing the membrane for a variety of healthy and disease-related processes. A large body of theoretical and numerical work has focused on identifying the physical properties that underly wrapping. Using a model system of micron-sized colloidal particles and giant unilamellar lipid vesicles with tunable adhesive forces, we measure a wrapping phase diagram and make quantitative comparisons to theoretical models. Our data are consistent with a model of membrane-particle interactions accounting for the adhesive energy per unit area, membrane bending rigidity, particle size, and vesicle radius.