Understanding transport across membranes has tremendous implications in understanding how organisms/cells react to its environment. This includes the elucidation of metabolic circuits, antibiotic resistance, development of membrane potential and hence biological generation of energy and much more. Studies on synthetic membrane vesicles at MPTD is focused on understanding the transport phenomena, and also on creating functional artificial cells that mimic microorganisms

Major studies include - small molecule permeation across membranes and membrane proteins to elucidate the transport routes for their metabolism in bacterium, Investigating antibiotic transport, anti-microbial peptide interaction with cell- membrane mimicking vesicles.

Functional bacterial cell models are created through generation of giant unilamellar vesicles that mimic gram +ve or gram -ve bacteria. Vescicle models are used as scaffolds to study antimicrobial activity of peptides.

Dynamic changes in membrane organization is difficult to simulate in-vitro, while it is an valuable model to study cellular processes like cell division and budding. We demonstrate large cell-like membrane deformations triggered by bacterial glycolipids self-assembled in vesicles in a robust manner. Stable remodelled membrane structures with high curvature are reported, ranging from a bud, tubulation, and ‘daughter’ vesicles interconnected via membrane neck and networks of nano-tubes, mimicking cellular structures. The findings provide an exciting framework for membrane reshaping in protein-free minimal cells for bottom-up biology applications and have implications in understanding the mechanistic basis of curved-cellular membrane.