Hydrodynamic extrusion of tubes from giant vesicles

Using hydrodynamical flows, we extract lipidic tethers from giant unilamellar vesicles attached by one point to the tip of a micro-rod. When a vesicle is submitted to a flow of constant velocity U above a threshold velocity, a tube starts to grow until it reaches a stationary length L-infinity. The tube length, L, and L-infinity are measured as a function of time and U, respectively. Simple theoretical laws fit our experimental data reasonably well.