| AVS 55th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Biomaterial Interfaces | Tuesday Sessions |
| Session BI-TuP |
| Session: | Biomaterials Interfaces Poster Session with Focus on Cells and Proteins at Interfaces |
| Presenter: | I.I. Rzeznicka, RIKEN, Japan |
| Authors: | I.I. Rzeznicka, RIKEN, Japan G.W.H. Wurpel, Utrecht University, The Netherlands M. Bonn, FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF), The Netherlands M.A. van der Horst, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands K. Hellingwerf, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands S. Matsunaga, The University of Tokyo, Japan T. Yamada, RIKEN, Japan M. Kawai, The University of Tokyo, Japan |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Adsorption of proteins on metal surfaces and their interactions present an important technological challenge in the field of biotechnology and construction of biomolecules-based functional devices. The process of protein adsorption is very complex and depends on surface properties, protein structure and its chemical composition. On Au surfaces, covalent bonding to the surface can in principle be easily achieved by utilizing unbound sulfur-containing amino acids resulting in the formation of strong Au-S bond, in analogy to the well known thiol chemistry. We studied adsorption of photoactive yellow protein (PYP) protein on Au(111) surface by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) in air and in the electrochemical environment. The results show that cysteine-containing mutant of PYP does not adsorb on the bare Au(111) surface. Stable, densely packed protein layers were observed after protein immobilization via amide bond formation onto self-assembled monolayers (SAMs), consisting of 3-mercaptopropanoic acid (3-MPA) and 11-mercaptoudecanoic acid (11-MUA) with the use of carbodiimide and N-hydroxysuccinimide. Layers of PYP prepared in this way show fluorescence activity visualized by fluorescence microscopy, indicating that the protein retains its photoactive function upon adsorption. We will also present our attempts to detect a photocurrent generated by laser illumination of PYP layers.