Toward Cell Membrane Biomimetic Lipidic Cubic Phases:A High-Throughput Exploration of Lipid Compositional Space

The bicontinuous lipidic cubic phase (LCP), which is based on the fundamental structure of the lipid bilayer, is increasingly used in a range of applications including drug delivery, in meso crystallisation of membrane proteins, in biosensors, and in biofuel cells. The majority of LCPs investigated to date have been formulated from a single lipid or a combination of two lipids in water. Such systems lack tunability, with only a narrow range of lattice parameters adopted. In addition, the lipid bilayer of these materials lacks the complexity of natural cell membranes, which are composed of hundreds of different lipids, and which may be essential to retaining the functionality of proteins embedded within them. In this work, we investigate the phase behaviour of quaternary lipid-water systems consisting of three different lipids (monoolein-cholesterol-phospholipid) and water using a combination of experimental and simulation techniques. This study provides a large library of lipidic materials with bilayer co...