Seminars

 Vesicles are bags of water that can carry drugs and imaging agents and be used for a variety of biomedical applications. Phospholipid vesicles can be assembled from lipid surfactants. However, there is no a priori reason on e cannot assemble vesicles from synthetic surfactants, such as block co-polymers or proteins. We show that vesicles can be assembled from polymers, leading to so-called polymersomes, with unique materials and storage capacities. In particular, we illustrate how to use polymersomes for optical imaging and optical response. We also show that vesicles and other supramolecular structures can be assembled from recombinant proteins. These materials can be easily altered to include biofunctional peptide motifs, such as protease cleavable domains and peptide ligands for targeting. We show a number of applications of these protein surfactants, including stabilization of air bubbles and emulsions.