AVS 60th International Symposium and Exhibition
    Biomembranes and Emerging Tools in Bioscience Plenary Session Sunday Sessions
       Session BP+AS-SuA

Invited Paper BP+AS-SuA5
Tools for Organisation of Proteins on the Nanometer Scale

Sunday, October 27, 2013, 4:20 pm, Room 201 B

Session: Biomembranes and Emerging Tools in Bioscience Plenary Session
Presenter: G.J. Leggett, University of Sheffield, UK
Correspondent: Click to Email
The organisation of proteins on biologically relevant length-scales – tens of nm – remains challenging. Protein molecules present substantial problems because of their tendency to become rapidly and irreversibly adsorbed onto many surfaces, and their propensity for post-adsorption conformational change. On nanometre length-scales, where characterisation of structures remains difficult, any problems associated with non-specific adsorption, or with ineffectual control over protein binding and orientation, are exacerbated. Our goal has been to integrate top-down and bottom up fabrication methods to yield robust, repeatable routes to the fabrication of protein nanostructures. We have developed a suite of photochemical routes to molecular nanopatterning. Near-field techniques may be used for the fabrication of arbitrary patterns in regions tens of micrometres in size, and interferometric methods yield periodic structures over square cm areas in fast, simple, cost-effective processes. Oligo(ethylene glycol)-derivatised nitrophenyl protecting groups have proved to be highly effective at eliminating non-specific adsorption, and may be readily deprotected to yield amine groups that can be coupled to biotin or nitrilotriacetic acid for site-specific immobilisation of proteins. UV photodegradation may be accomplished in a variety of ways – by direct degradation of oligoethylene glycol functional groups to yield reactive aldehyde functional groups in a single step; by unzipping of methacrylate brushes; by dehalogenation of initiators for atom-transfer radical polymerisation; and by localised photcatalytic lithography to yield 50 – 70 nm protein structures that may be readily imaged by confocal microscopy. Finally, simple photochemical methods also provide routes to the fabrication of polymeric and metallic nanostructures (for plasmonic readout) for use in fundamental studies of membrane protein organisation and function.