Submission Date

4-25-2022

Document Type

Paper- Restricted to Campus Access

Department

Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

Adviser

Samantha Wilner

Committee Member

Meghan Tierney

Committee Member

Eric Williamsen

Department Chair

Eric Williamsen

Department Chair

Anthony Lobo

Project Description

Lipid micelles are an ideal candidate to enhance solubility and delivery of hydrophobic drugs and imaging agents, due to their small size. However, use of lipid micelles as delivery vehicles has been challenged by the fact that these particles are inherently unstable in vivo due to concentration dependence and interactions with serum proteins. We have developed a minimalist method to stabilize the formation of micelles using lipid monomers covalently modified with short oligonucleotide sequences (16 nucleotides in length). In this study, we sought to determine the effects of lipid tail length to micellar stability. By varying lipid tails or oligonucleotide sequence, micellar structure can be easily tuned to create a library of micelles with varying stability. Our results show that we have successfully synthesized, and purified DNA-lipid conjugates composed of 16 carbon (C16) or 18 carbon (C18) tails with 1 (monoacyl) or two (diacyl) chains. Fluorescence resonance energy transfer assays indicate that the micelles formed from C18diacyl conjugates were most stable, while micelles formed from C16monoacyl conjugates were least stable.

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