Giant vesicles as an efficient intermediate for H NMR analyses of proteoliposomes in water suspension and in oriented lipid bilayers

Many standard preparations of proteoliposomes lead to vesicles with a diameter of 100-400nm. Such vesicles do not give good powder spectra in 2H NMR because molecular reorientation via lateral diffusion is not sufficiently slow on 2H NMR time scale. On the other hand, oriented bilayers may suffer from insufficient hydration problems. We show herein that giant proteolipidic vesicles give 2H NMR powder spectra comparable to the more standard MLVs, and are a good intermediate for the preparation of well oriented membrane protein-lipid bilayers, thus allowing to compare the properties of oriented bilayers stacks and fully hydrated giant vesicles.