Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2017) 132: 284
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/i2017-11554-1

Regular Article

Growth and instability of a phospholipid vesicle in a bath of fatty acids

¹ Laboratoire Matière et Systèmes Complexes, CNRS UMR 7057 Universitée Denis Diderot, 10 Rue A. Domon et L. Duquet, Paris, France
² Center for Studies in Physics and Biology, Rockefeller University, 1230 York Avenue, 10021, New York, NY, USA
³ School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, 55401, Minneapolis, MN, USA

^* e-mail: dervauxjulien@wanadoo.fr

Received: 13 March 2017
Accepted: 13 May 2017
Published online: 29 June 2017

Abstract

Using a microfluidic trap, we study the behavior of individual phospholipid vesicles in contact with fatty acids. We show that spontaneous fatty acids insertion inside the bilayer is controlled by the vesicle size, osmotic pressure difference across the membrane and fatty acids concentration in the external bath. Depending on these parameters, vesicles can grow spherically or become unstable and fragment into several daughter vesicles. We establish the phase diagram for vesicle growth and we derive a simple thermodynamic model that reproduces the time evolution of the vesicle volume. Finally, we show that stable growth can be achieved on an artificial cell expressing a simple set of bacterial cytoskeletal proteins, paving the way toward artificial cell reproduction.