Interaction of a charged polymer with zwitterionic lipid vesicles.

The interaction between polyethylenimine (PEI) and phospholipid bilayers plays an important role in several biophysical applications such as DNA transfection of target cells. Despite considerable investigation into the nature of the interaction between PEI and phospholipid bilayers, the physical process remains poorly understood. In this paper, we study the impact of PEI on 1,2-dimyristoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DMPC) vesicles as a function of salt concentration using several techniques including dynamic (DLS) and static (SLS) light scattering, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). At low salt concentration, vesicles aggregate, leading to the formation of stable clusters whose final size depends on the PEI concentration. At high salt concentration the system does not aggregate; DSC and NMR data reveal that the PEI penetrates into the bilayer, and SLS measurements are consistent with PEI crossing the bilayer. The transfectional ability of PEI is discussed in terms of these results.