Vesicles are quasi-spherical shells formed from lipid bilayers.
The standard technique for making vesicles involves using an applied pressure to push lipid solution through a membrane filter consisting of cylindrical pores. During this process, large structures consisting of many lipid bilayers are broken up into quasi-spherical shells approximately the same size as the pores, and consisting of only a single bilayer. The technique is used extensively, but the actual process by which the vesicles are produced is not well understood. In this talk I will discuss our work characterizing this process, models of the process, and how we can use extrusion to look at material properties of lipid bilayers.