ABSTRACT
Lipid membrane systems in general and giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) in particular can be easily studied by techniques employing visible light, such as light microscopy: a GUV can be observed under a light microscope for many hours without being destroyed or transformed or even without suffering any visible degradation. However, phospholipids, cholesterol, proteins and other membrane-forming molecules that are fluorescently labeled for visualization, solutions with fluorophores added for measuring permeability and other properties, biomimetic constructs including light sensitive proteins embedded or interacting with the bilayer … arguably most practical GUV systems strongly absorb light and bare thus the potential of inducing membrane transformations when exposed to visible light, by mechanisms that we discuss in this chapter.
