Patterned and switchable surfaces for biomaterial applications

Andrew Hook – Patterned and switchable surfaces for biomaterial applicationsby tuning the alcohol:methyl ratio enabled the successful formation of spots of Cy5dye in dimethylsufoxide (DMSO) with reproducible size and shape [123].As an alternative to contact printing, non-contact printing has been utilised forinjecting preformed DNA onto a surface at specific locations with high precision.This method is commonly achieved by utilising inkjet technology. The advantage ofthis strategy is that problems with pin transfer, such as risk of transfer of materials,variation in spot formation and the influence of metallic pins, can be avoided [94].Furthermore, the development of an on chip DNA growth technique has also beensuccessful achieved (see section 1.2.1).DNA microarrays have previously been reviewed in detail [14-16, 82, 96, 125-130].1.4.2. Protein microarraysProtein microarrays are predominately used to investigate the abundance ofspecific proteins, usually achieved by the use of an antibody microarray, and howproteins interact with each other or with small molecules [3]. Protein microarrays areformed by adsorbing or covalently binding a number of different proteins in an arrayformat. Washing with a labelled target molecule or a number of differently labelledtargets, consisting of other proteins or small molecules, can result in thedetermination of the protein-protein or protein-small molecule interactions. Proteinmicroarrays have been extended to include peptide microarrays, which, like proteinarrays, are a series of small peptides immobilised onto a surface in an array format.Peptide arrays are advantageous over protein arrays in that peptides can besynthetically made and are, thus, easier to purify and enable the study of proteinfragments, specifically the reactive sites [3].1-43