Need quantitative analysis of liposome diffusion in a franz diffusion set up over different time points. Which cost effective methods can be used to tag liposomes for this purpose?
If you want to label liposomes you have 2 possibilities: encapsulating a fluorescent dye (or even better a fluorescently labeled macromolecule) or inserting a fluorescently labeled lipid in the bilayer.
Both methods have their drawbacks, but in my opinion is much better to use a tagged lipid rather then encapsulating anything in the liposomes. The reason being that, especially with soy PC, liposomes will not retain their content for long and you may end up detecting the fluorescence of the free molecule. Same may apply to tagged lipids, but in a lesser extent.
In terms of cost-effectiveness, labeling a protein is dirty cheap, but before you start with your actual experiment you have to determine the release profile from the vesicles. This is time consuming and also require some extra material, which may bring the cost on par with the more expensive options of tagged lipids.
My idea, however, is there is no better way than using a radiolabeled lipid and/or cholesterol (if you use it). Not very cheap, but gives you a very high sensitivity. Moreover, it has the advantage that it won't change the physicochemical properties of the liposomes, whereas using fluorescence certainly will. If you can work with radioactive material, go for it. Tritiated cholesterol costs as much as a batch of rhodamine or bodipy labelled PEG-DSPE.
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