Biomimetic lipids: 3D nanotexture and bacteriostatic films.

Negative self-assembly curvature can induce a 3-D structuring, or texturing, of the water-air interface.

This recent and novel discovery will be systematically exploited in several ways.Firstly, the project will explore the large-scale, bottom-up, interfacial nanopatterning made possible by this breakthrough – for example as films transferred to solid interfaces.

It will address other negative self-assembly architectures to establish the generality of the phenomenon.The same branched lipids which led to this discovery are suggested to have bacteriostatic properties; this claim will be explored and the branched lipid family will be specifically targeted to gauge the extent of the activity, and how the alkyl chain length and branch position affect bacteriostaticity of the transferred films.

These results will then be interpreted in terms of the self-assembly curvature to establish whether this is the likely mechanism for the effect; this would have important implications for future antimicrobial strategies.The hypothesis is advanced that the observation of negative curvature at the air-water interface could also provide a facile screening for the formation of inverse curvature bulk phases in lipid water mixtures – and vice versa – and will be experimentally tested using SAXS.

Such phases are commonly used as drug delivery vehicles. A long-term vision is thus an inverse curvature lipid delivery system with intrinsic bacteriostatic properties.