A Liposome Described In Details

By Anna Hernandez


A liposome, an artificial vesicle comprises a double layer of fatty acids. It may be used as tools utilized to administer nutrients and pharmaceutical drugs to your body systems. They may be made by disrupting some biological membranes which may somehow involve sonication.

Liposomes are typically made of natural phospholipids. Besides, they may also be made of a combination of lipid chains bearing somewhat a high degree of surfactant features. These lipid chains might contain egg phosphatidylethanolamine. Their model may take the shape of surface ligands which are used for linking the tissues which are unhealthy.

There are quite different categories of these synthetic lipid laden vesicles. The major types of liposomes are multilamellar vesicle that is shortened as MLV, small unilamellar vesicle that is abbreviated as SUV, large one lamellar vesicle whose short form is LUV, and lastly the cochleate vesicle. This depends on their number of lamella.

These products should not be mixed up with micelles as well as reverse micelles. This is because they are closely similar in structure. The only difference between them is that liposomes are made of bilayer of lipids while micelles and reverse micelles are composed of monolayers of lipids.

The membranes of the structures are usually made of phospholipids, which allude to the molecules with head groups as well as tail groups. Their heads are typically attracted to water. Nevertheless, the tail is only made of long chains of hydrocarbons hence are usually resisted by water.

Their hydrophilic heads comprise the outermost layers whereas their hydrophobic tails comprise the internal layers. This is so since their heads are pulled by water molecules while the tails are resisted by water particles. Conversely, in each cell, the layer of heads constantly faces outside, and is attracted to the charged water environment. The next layer of the heads faces inside the cell, and gets pulled to the water molecules found in the cell. Nonetheless, hydrophobic tails of its outermost layer face similar tails of the internal layers, thus forming a dual layer design.

Liposomes were made first by a British hematologist, Dr. Alec Bangham, 1961 in the Babraham Institute at Cambridge. However, its publication took place later in 1964. They were simply found to bear a resemblance to plasmalemmas. This was demonstrated by pictures which were formed by the microscope which Bangham had used.

They encapsulate an aqueous solution using a hydrophobic membrane. Chemicals which are insoluble in water easily pass across their membranes whereas the ones soluble in water do not. Nonetheless, dissolved hydrophilic particles are able to go through hydrophilic heads. As a result, it may be utilized in releasing hydrophobic and hydrophilic particles. It releases its constituents by adhering to other organelles with similar bilayer walls for instance cell membranes.

These vesicles are utilized in drug and gene delivery services. The drugs and DNA to be conveyed usually contain pH that is appropriate for the roles of any liposome. Its application in DNA transformation is referred to as lipofection. Besides, it can as well be used in delivering dyes to textiles, pesticides to plants, enzymes and nutritional boosters to foods as well as and also cosmetics to skin.




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