CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

A relevant question in cell biology with broad implications in biomedicine is how the organization and dynamics of interacting membranes modulate signalling cascades that involve cell-cell contact. The functionalization of surfaces with supported lipid bilayers containing tethered proteins is a particularly useful method to present ligands with membrane-like mobility to cells. Here, we present a method to generate micrometer-sized patches of lipid bilayers decorated with proteins. The method uses an economic micro-contact printing technique basedon one-photon lithography that can be easily implementedin a commercial laser scanning microscope. We verified that both, proteins and lipids, freely diffuse within thepatterned-bilayer as assessed by z-scan fluorescence correlation spectroscopy and fluorescence recovery after photobleaching. These results suggest that the supported lipid bilayerspatterns constitute an optimal system to explore processes involving directinteractions between cells. We also illustrate possible applications of this method by exploring theinteraction of cells expressing the Fas receptor and patterns of lipid bilayers containing an agonist antibody against Fas.