Protein printboard
Date: 3.5.2007
Chemists in the Netherlands have created nanoscale structures that can immobilize proteins with exquisite control over specificity, strength and orientation. The researchers hope their method will bring integrated biochips, which might combine any protein function with electronic or sensory elements, a step closer.
Jurriaan Huskens at the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology at Enschede, and colleagues, used the so-called molecular printboard technique that Huskens had previously developed. The technique combines top-down approaches to nanotechnology, such as lithography, with bottom-up approaches like self-assembly and supramolecular chemistry.
The printboard technique, so named for its parallels with the motherboard of a computer (comprising a printed circuit with additional functionalities plugged in), involves printing a patterned layer of cyclodextrins onto a surface of gold or glass. Using the strong affinity that cyclodextrins show towards certain guest molecules, researchers can then add further layers of building blocks tagged with such molecules...
Whole article "www.rsc.org":[ www.rsc.org]
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