分子間相互作用の超高感度測定のための新しいマイクロ流体プラットフォーム

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Today, with rapid advancement of nanotechnology, we can fabricate devices to answer some of the major scientific questions. One of these questions deals with fundamentals behind protein-protein interactions (PPI) given how crucial proteins are for many processes including but not limited to organism development, metabolism, and defense against viruses. Experimentally measuring protein-protein binding forces has a significant impact on how we see and understand living systems. Despite the practicality of knowing exact values of intermolecular binding forces, their actual measurement remains challenging given the complexity of proteins’ nature. With this in mind, we developed a novel, simple, and high-throughput microfluidic platform for ultrasensitive detection of PPI by means of light manipulation. We fabricated Ag/Al- coated high aspect ratio nanopillars, coated their surface with antibodies specific to C-reactive protein and SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and later used them to detect their respective antigens with limits of detection equal to 11 and 5 pM, respectively. We assembled microfluidic devices with polystyrene (PS) thin film base decorated with PS nanopillars and detected PPI within Biotin-Streptavidin-X systems, where X corresponds to ligands with various molecular weights. After optimizing our PPI detection system, we collected data using various protein and biomolecule systems. We believe these results will contribute both quantitative and qualitative information on commonly used protein systems and help improve currently available PPI analysis platforms.