Morphological Changes of Kinetically Trapped Tubular Vesicles Driven by the Production of Synthetic Phospholipids in a Vesicular Membrane

A tubulation of giant vesicles (GVs) composed of zwitterionic phospholipids was induced by the addition of the precursor of the phospholipid. The generated tubular GVs can be regarded as a kinetically-trapped structure because it was converted to more stable spherical GVs by heating through the one-way deformation. Such a morphological interconversion is the first example to be rationalized by the concept of the thermodynamically and kinetically controlled formation of molecular self-assemblies.