DNA hybridisation-mediated vesicle fusion - kinetics and fate of fusion

Fusing vesicles in a controlled manner has major advantages in diagnostic and drug delivery applications, however achieving controlled fusion is not trivial. Commonly used physically mediated fusion techniques such as co-extrusion and freeze-thawing lead to heterogeneous fusion products, where the mixing ratio of different vesicle species is not easily controlled. We have designed a DNA hybridisation-based assay for directed fusion of vesicles upon mixing, and applied it in a recently published diagnostic assay to detect microRNA. In a previous experiment at ZOOM, we studied DNA-functionalised vesicle formulations before and after fusion. Here we will expand this dataset to i) include longer time points to identify when DNA-mediated lipid mixing plateaus, and ii) characterise fusion products with respect to lipid formulation, mixing ratios and DNA density on the vesicle surfaces.