Morphological transformation of vesicles into tubular structures by adding polyampholytes or dendritic glycopolymers

•Morphological transformation of vesicles into a network structure.•Polyampholytes as tubulating agents.•Electrostatic fine tuning between functional groups. For the first time tubulating properties of spherical dendritic glycopolymers and linear alternating polyampholytes against non-uniform negatively charged giant vesicles are proven by light microscopy and cryo-scanning electron microscopy study. Real time observation of the morphological transformation from giant vesicles to tubular structures, simulating morphogenesis in living cells, is given by using the cationic and H-bond active dendritic glycopolymer accompanied by reducing the size of the giant vesicles and the evidence of vesicle–vesicle interaction which was only postulated in a previous study. Similar morphogenesis of non-uniform giant vesicles into tubular network structure can be observed by using a polyampholyte in the stretched conformation at pH 9. Pearl necklace and tubular network structure formation are also observed by applying anionic vesicles of significant smaller dimensions with average size dimensions of 35nm, after adding the polyampholyte at pH 9. However, the fitting accuracy between the functional groups along the backbone chain of the polyampholyte on one side and the vesicle surface on the other side is of high importance for the transformation process by using polyampholytes. The resulting tubular and network structures offer new fields of application as microfluidic transport channels or template phases for the shape controlled formation of nanoparticles.