Stiffness of Fluid and Gel Phase Lipid Nanovesicles: Weighting the Contributions of Membrane Bending Modulus and Luminal Pressurization

In the manuscript, Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) is employed for characterizing the mechanical response of nanosized lipid vesicles presenting membranes with different physical state. Results suggest that the mechanical response of lipid vesicles can be ascribed to two main contributions, i) the luminal pressure and ii) the intrinsic membrane rigidity. By developing a spring-based model, authors were able to rationalize the apparent disagrement between the two most commonly employed models for describing vesicle mechanics.