(324g) Thermally Reversible Heteroaggregation of Lipid Vesicles Using DNA as Biomolecular Combination Locks

Lipid vesicles are commonly used as model systems for biological cell membranes but they also have engineering applications as soft, technological containers. We study the binding of lipid vesicles using the specific interaction between two complimentary single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) oligonucleotides. Heteroaggregation is observed between vesicles decorated with the ssDNA (type A) and vesicles decorated with the complimentary ssDNA (type B). We investigate how the oligonucleotide-to-vesicle ratio affects the observed cluster size. Vesicle binding is thermally reversible: repeated assembly and disassembly of the vesicle aggregates can be induced by cycling in temperature. Regulating fusion events between the vesicles bound together by the DNA can lead to the controlled mixing of the contents of type A and type B vesicles within these multi-compartmental structures.