Figure 4.

Assembly of prototissues by lectin–glycan interactions. (a) Confocal sections of an arbitrary plane of a prototissue made by cross-linking Gb3-containing GUVs (membrane marker: DHPE-TxRed, red colour) in the presence of Alexa488-labelled lectin LecA (200 nM, green colour). (b) Representative x–y, x–z and y–z cross sections of the merge image of (a), demonstrating the attachment of most GUVs to the streptavidin-coated coverslip. (c) For better clarity, the saturated adhesion patches of GUVs (same image as in (a) and (b)) are shown at z = 0, as depicted in the schematic illustration. GUVs were prepared by electroformation [105] with a lipid composition of DOPC/cholesterol/Gb3/DOPE-biotin/DHPE-TxRed (64 : 30 : 5:0.5 : 0.5 mol%). Scale bar: 5 µm. (Online version in colour.)