Advances in Biomembranes and Lipid Self-Assembly

Aleš Iglič received his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in physics and M.Sc. degree in biophysics from the Department of Physics, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, all from the University of Ljubljana. He is a Full Professor and the Head of Laboratory of Biophysics of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at University of Ljubljana. His main research interests are in electrostatics, mechanics and statistical physics of lipid nanostructures and biological membranes. He is devoted to higher education, basic research in biophysics and close contacts to clinical practice. Prof. Iglič was visiting scientist and professor at Åbo Academy University in Turku (Finland), Friedrich Schiller University in Jena (Germany) and Czech Technical University in Prague (Czech Republic). He established collaborations with researchers from different universities across the Europe, USA and India and was supervisor of many M.Sc., Ph.D. and postdoctoral students from Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland, Iran, Bulgaria, Germany, India and Israel. Since 2009 is the editor of Elsevier book series »Advances in Planar Lipid Bilayers and Liposomes« (APLBL). Chandrashekhar V. Kulkarni received his PhD in Chemical Biology from University of London for which he was in receipt of a Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher Fellowship at Imperial College London (2005-2008). Earlier he completed his BSc (1999) and MSc (2001) in Chemistry from Shivaji University Kolhapur, India and started his research career at the National Chemical Laboratory Pune, India. He had a few postdoc stints at University of Graz-Austria, University of Bayreuth-Germany and University of Cambridge-UK during which he worked on a wide range of projects. In March 2013 Dr Kulkarni started ‘Lipid Nanostructures Group’ focussing on highly interdisciplinary and cutting-edge projects. Some of his research interests include complex biomembranes and biomolecule interactions, nanostructured lipid particles as carrier systems, and novel nano-bio-applications of lipid nanostructures. Dr Kulkarni joined the editorial board of APLBL in early 2013 and later as an editor of this book series. Michael Rappolt has been appointed as Professor of Lipid Biophysics (School of Food Science and Nutrition) in April 2013. He received his MSc and PhD in physics from the University of Hamburg and achieved his habilitation at the University of Ljubljana in the Faculty of Health Sciences. He was Senior Researcher at the Synchrotron Trieste Outstation (Italy), Institute of Biophysics and Nanosystems Research (Austrian Academy of Sciences), before becoming Assistant Professor at Graz University of Technology. Professor Michael Rappolt is a leading authority on investigating the structure and dynamics of lipid membranes using small-angle X-ray scattering. His recent research activities have concentrated on the study of drug/membrane interactions with potential applications to drug delivery and food. Further research topics concentrate on characterising crystallization processes in food, the investigation of colloid interfaces and the determination of particle structures on the nanoscale. He also seeks to transfer standard measurement techniques applied in food research – such as mechanic (sound and shear) and thermodynamic sample manipulations to synchrotron sites – to understand food on a smaller (nanometre) and faster (microsecond) scale.

1. The Importance of Planarity for Lipid Bilayers as BiomembranesKazutami Sakamoto2. Interaction of Cells and Platelets with Biomaterial Surfaces Treated with Gaseous PlasmaIta Junkar3. Competition Between Electrostatic and Thermodynamic Casimir Potentials in Near-Critical Mixtures with IonsAlina Ciach4. Effect of Selected Dendrimers and Dendriplexes on Model Lipid MembranesMaksim Ionov, Tibor Hianik and Maria Bryszewska5. The Membrane Bending Modulus in Experiments and Simulations: A Puzzling PictureDavide Bochicchio and Luca Monticelli6. Bicontinuous Phases of Lyotropic Liquid CrystalsWojciech Gózdz7. Peculiarities in the Study of Pre-formed DSPC Lipid Vesicles by Coarse Grain Molecular DynamicsHassan Chamati, Roman Trobec and Janez I. Pavlic8. Extracellular Vesicles in Cancer Nami Yamada and Yukihiro Akao