(754e) Photopatternable Synthetic Materials with Biorecognition Abilities for Use In Analytical Microdevices
AIChE Annual Meeting
2008
2008 Annual Meeting
Materials Engineering and Sciences Division
Biomimetics I
Friday, November 21, 2008 - 12:15pm to 12:35pm
Molecular recognition is crucial to the function of many biological systems including substrate binding by enzymes, molecular signaling, and immunological response. Synthetic materials produced with these molecular recognition traits would find use in a number of different applications, especially in areas where harsh processing conditions would denature or destroy naturally produced biomolecules. In this work, we investigate the fabrication of synthetic polymeric films with surface exposed binding sites specific to biomolecules of interest (immunoglobulins, etc.) as a means to create sensitive devices. We have developed a novel surface imprinting technique where the target protein is used as a template in the creation of binding sites. The use of a templating mask lends well to traditional photolithographic processes and enables the construction of surfaces with spatial control on molecular recognition. Recognitive sites show a 5-fold preference for the target IgG over control materials with minimum affinity for competing IgG molecules. Reuse of the template mask is shown to be possible, allowing for a number of synthetic recognitive surfaces to be created from a small amount of the template molecule. The work is being extended to include other species of interest including cell adhesion molecules.