Abstract:

Lipid materials having nanostructures that deviate from the conventional flat bilayer arrangement such as hexagonally packed lipid tubes and bi-continuous cubic phases are ubiquitous in nature. Their role remains elusive but over the years several pathologies and organelle functions have been coupled to lipid membrane structural complexity. In this talk, we will discuss lipid membrane polymorphism and how it can be exploited to generate a new class of materials for the delivery of cargo to cells. We combine a number of techniques including X-ray scattering, cryo-EM, and cell culture to demonstrate that the structure of lipid nanoparticles is a powerful handle to boost the delivery of genes to cells. The simple argument that non-lamellar phases having intertwined nanoscale channels exist to increase surface-to-volume ratio might be insufficient to completely describe the experimental findings.

If there is time, we will also introduce the concept of soft-material alloys. Lipids and polymers can mix in hybrid membranes having synergistic dynamical and structural properties; many of which are seen in lipid-protein membrane systems in nature