From Lipid Bilayers to Synaptic Vesicles

Conventional molecular bioscience deals with molecules in solution, but in the cell molecules are often organized in functional aggregates. Visualizing and studying these structures is one of the key challenges posed to nanoscience by biology. The invention of the AFM has revolutionized the way in which microscopists explore biological structures . The author Ann-Katrin Awizio gives a short overview about the use of the AFM in the life sciences and sample preparation methods. In this work the techniques (imaging modes, force spectroscopy) of the atomic force microscope (AFM) were used to investigate biological samples, namely lipid-based systems. To this end several systems with biological relevance based on self-assembly, such as a solid-supported membrane (SSM) based sensor for transport proteins, a bilayer of the natural lipid extract from an archaebacterium, and synaptic vesicles, were investigated by the AFM. Therefore this book is written for biologists, physicists, chemists and material engineers. Since it is an interdisicplinary work each reader will get some insight and useful references about the connection of nanobiology with physics and surface chemistry .