Supported lipid bilayers as a biomimetic platform for neuronal cell culture

$\textit{The lipid bipayer}$ is the basis of the cell membrane. It serves as a barrier that separates the cell from the environment and provides platform for membrane proteins helping them to fulfill their functions. To advance studies of the cell membrane, membrane proteins and cell-cell interactions, it would be favourable to create an artificial platform which can mimic the cell membrane. It can help to exclude various factrors influencing the experiments carried out on real cells and provide a possibility to focus on the phenomeana interesting for researchers. It would allow many advanced methods of investigation which can not be applied for living cells. Such a platform can also help to use some advanced properties of the cell membrane in biosensors and medical applications. Several systems that can mimic the cell membrane have been developed such as liposomes (lipid vesicles) or pore suspended lipid membranes (such as black lipid membranes - a classical membrane system). Although these systems have been used extensively for many years, they possess disadvantages which limit their applications. [...