Soft Nanostructures for Patterning Biomolecule Tracks for Molecular Motors

Jay Park, Matthew Caparizzo, Yujie Sun, Yale E. Goldman, and Russell J. Composto

MOTIVATION:

• Soft nanostructures are smart substrates for immobilizing/patterning biomolecules (e.g, .F-actin , proteins).
• Precise control over molecule location and adhesion is essential to molecular motor driven separation, purification and detection devices, and biomolecular micro-electrical, mechanical systems (Bio MEMS).

OBJECTIVE AND APPROACH:

• Control interaction between biomolecule and soft nanostructures using (1) amphiphilic block copolymers (2) hydrophobic block copolymers, (3) charged hydrogels and (4) nanoparticle decorated surfaces.

Swelling of hydrophilic PAA domains before (top) and after (bottom) cross-linking. Attachment of F-actin (blue lines) to charged domains (bottom right). Macromolecules 2010		Effect of increasing the surface charge and topography of nanostructured films, showing F-actin (a)tethered at one end ,(b) parallel and fluctuating along the surface, (c) immobilized and, (d) stretching between islands and forming rings. Soft Matter 2010
F-actin (single strand) spanning hydrophobic block copolymer with 20nm spacing between lamella. Langmuir submitted.		Molecular motor traversing F-actin attached to nanoparticles grafted to a soft nanostructure. Single molecules experiments proved viability of the motor even on immobilized F-actin.

CONCLUSIONS:

• Biomolecule attachment to soft nanostructures depends on surface charge, substrate modulus, and nanodomain size.
• Future studies will examine viability of F-actin, attached to nanoparticles, for supporting molecular motor motion.