Designing Lithographically Patterned Phospholipid Bilayer Arrays for Next- Generation Biosensors and Immunoassays

摘要

We have met approximately 90% of the goals outlined in our original grant application. Fifteen papers were published acknowledging ARO funding. The work accomplished involves the exploitation of temperature, concentration, pH, and ionic strength gradients on-chip for use in heterogeneous immunoassays for ligand-receptor binding at biomembrane surfaces. The platforms we have built allow for high throughput measurements, while requiring only microliters of solution in order to obtain binding information. The signal-to-noise ratio is higher than conventional assays because time dependent sources of noise have largely been eliminated. We have studied IgG binding to fluid membranes as a function of both hapten density and cholesterol content in the membrane. The results suggest that we can now understand the basic principles for multiple binding of analytes (proteins, toxins, viruses, etc...) at a membrane interface. In addition, we expanded our lab-on-a-chip platforms for use with whole cells in chemotaxis as well as in the employment of elastomeric proteins and polymers for temperature gradient assays.