Bilayer Recording & Microscopy

Lipid bilayers are a key research tool to investigate membrane proteins in a tailorable lipid environment. Compared to conventional methods the bilayer technique is not limited to cellular systems and extends the scope to subcellular membrane vesicles and pore forming proteins like synucleins or toxins.

With the invention of the Ionovation Bilayer Explorer high quality imaging and Single-Molecule-Detection, especially fluorescence techniques are inimitably combined with state-of-the-art bilayer recordings. With its consolidated design the Ionovation Bilayer Explorer fits any inverted microscope to provide a versatile solution that suits the needs in basic as well as in industrial research.

This opens up new vistas for a countless number of experiments

• ligand binding directly related to ion flux
• binding studies under pre-defined membrane potentials
• membrane associated protein oligomerization, aggregation & tracking
• various lipid compositions in user controlled model membranes
• and many more.

Single-Molecule-Microscopy is the high-end field of todays imaging techniques. It helps for instance to understand the role of the vast number of proteins involved in cellular processes. Besides high-end requirements for the microscope it is most important to provide a micro-environment that keeps the target molecules under natural or well defined conditions. The Ionovation Bilayer Slide concept - to merge the place for electrophysiological recordings and imaging - is the ideal base for multifunctional and outstanding measurements.

A frequent use of Single-Molecule-Microscopy is the determination of biophysical and biochemical characteristics. The high optical quality of the Ionovation Bilayer Slide allows the direct analysis of these parameters. Therefore, Ionovation Bilayer Slides can be used for routine testing as well as for high content data acquisition.

Furthermore, the concurrent recording of optical and electrophysiological signals allows to analyze structural and functional relations of cellular processes on a molecular level in real-time.