Artificial tubular connections between cells based on synthetic lipid nanotubes

Article Article scientifique Article Artificial tubular connections between cells based on synthetic lipid nanotubes eng 2017 author Kozintsev Alexander 836145 author Sugihara Kaori 818285 20700-20708 10.1039/C7RA02187A 2046-2069 http://xlink.rsc.org/?DOI=C7RA02187A Tunneling nanotubes (TNTs) have become a major topic of interest as a form of intercellular communication due to their recent discovery. However, research on this subject has often suffered from a lack of controllability in the generation of the nanotubular connections. In this work, we demonstrate a simplified approach to selectively create a direct nanotubular connection between eukaryotic cells by manually manipulating self-assembling lipid nanotubes (LNTs) from inverted hexagonal-phase lipid blocks. The technique requires minimal instrumentation for creating the LNT connection between cells compared to conventional approaches. Based on the diffusion of fluorescent lipids from LNTs into cell membranes (D = 0.032 ± 0.003 μm2 s−1), the probability of observing membrane fusion between LNTs and cell membranes was estimated as 30%. Among these cell–LNT junctions the resulting structure is open-ended roughly 75% of the time, as evidenced from observations of the diffusion of a water-soluble dye between two cells connected with this nanotubular structure. Dewey 540 38 Département de chimie physique 142 false 690 Groupe Sugihara RSC advances 7 33 452fe098-8b9f-435b-8643-94145b19026a Article (Published version) Public ref01549.pdf 720899 application/pdf openAccess Faculté des sciences / Section de chimie et biochimie / Département de chimie physique

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Artificial tubular connections between cells based on synthetic lipid nanotubes	RSC advances			2017	583	328

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Kozintsev, Alexander