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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 10: Posters: Molecular Motors
BP 10.7: Poster
Tuesday, April 1, 2014, 09:30–12:30, P1
Microtubule Guiding on Nano-Patterns of Molecular Motors Generated by Laser-Ablation — •Matthäus Mittasch1,2, Cordula Reuther1,2, Stephan Grill1,3, and Stefan Diez1,2 — 1Max Planck Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics, 01307 Dresden, Germany — 2B CUBE - Center for Molecular Bioengineering, Technische Universität Dresden, 01307 Dresden, Germany — 3Biotechnology Center, Technische Universität Dresden, 01307 Dresden, Germany
Molecular motors such as kinesin-1 are highly optimized biological nano-machines that can be immobilized within engineered environments for the transport of cytoskeletal filaments such as microtubules in order to miniaturize and revolutionize hybrid nano-devices. However, for many applications it is of great importance to control the direction of the filament motion on planar surfaces to fulfill unique tasks such as the specific sorting of molecular entities. Here, we demonstrate the generation of highly-localized binding sites for kinesin-1 on poly(L-lysine)-g-poly(ethylene glycol)-coated surfaces using laser-ablation. Thereby, specific patterns of molecular motors with freely programmable shapes and feature-sizes down to a few hundred nanometers were generated. Straight lines, having a width of about 500 nanometers were shown to guide microtubules reliably. Moreover, we tested the guiding behavior on curved lines to investigate experimentally, if complex patterns can be used to sort microtubules, as was recently predicted theoretically (Rupp and Nédélec, Lab Chip (12), 2012).