Congratulations to Juanma and Maite for their paper, recently accepted in Lab on a Chip journal (IF: 6.914, 2018-Q1). The publication entitled: Microfluidic chip with pillar array for controlled production and observation of lipid membrane nanotubes, from Juan Manuel Martinez-Galvez, Maite Garcia-Hernando, Fernando Benito-Lopez, Lourdes Basabe-Desmonts and Anna V. Shnyrova is a collaboration of the Microfluidics Cluster UPV/EHU with the Shnyrova´s group from the Biofisika Institute at UPV/EHU.

Abstract

Lipid membrane nanotubes (NTs) are a widespread template for in vitro studies of cellular processes happening at high membrane curvature. Traditionally NTs are made one by one, using sophisticated membrane micromanipulations, while the methods for controlled batch production of NTs are of general demand. Here we propose a lab-on-a-chip (LOC) approach to the simultaneous formation of multiple NTs with length and radius controlled by the chip design. The NTs are prepared by rolling micron-sized silica beads covered by lipid lamellas over a polymer micro-pillars array, rendering free-standing NTs with the length set by the distance between the pillars. The low 5 μm height of the pillars grown directly on a thin glass coverslip allows fluorescence microscopy monitoring of the NTs with high power objectives. The radii of the NTs are controlled via lateral membrane tension set by the lipid reservoir on the pillars, function of the lipid amount, and the pillar material. Mounting of the array in a microfluidic chamber permits for fast and turbulence-free addition of components, such as proteins, to preformed NTs, enabling real-time quantification of the protein interactions with multiple NTs, potentially resolving different modes of the protein activity in a single experiment.