查看完整版本: ACS Nano Picks 03:Sticky floors and sticky fingers reviewed by Prof. Henry Hess

ACS Nano Picks 03:Sticky floors and sticky fingers reviewed by Prof. Henry Hess

By Prof. Henry Hess
University of Florida
Article Title: [b]Cargo pick-up from engineered loading stations by kinesin driven molecular shuttles[/b]Article Citation: [b][i]Lab on a Chip[/i][/b], 2007, [b]7[/b], 1263-1271

[b]Article Review:[/b]

The late Richard Smalley noted that “sticky fingers” are a challenge for molecular nanotechnology (Scientific American 285, 76-77, 9/2001), a contention which has been vigorously debated by Eric Drexler and colleagues. The problem arises from the difficulty to let go once a bond has formed between two nanostructures. If you've ever thrown away a piece of adhesive tape, you've probably experienced a similar challenge on the macroscale and probably solved it by trying to stick the tape to something more adhesive than your fingers.

Brunner et al. confronted this problem in a nanosystem, when trying to transfer gold nanoparticles from a surface onto a molecular shuttle (a functionalized microtubule gliding on a surface coated with kinesin motor proteins). The nanoparticle should be reliably stuck on the surface, but also easily be picked up by a shuttle coming by. Brunner et al. showed that by reducing the stickiness of the surface, cargo pick-up is facilitated, and that patterning of the surface with sticky and non-sticky areas enables the creation of distinct loading stations.   

Similar to cargo loading by nanotransporters in-vivo (Terada & Hirokawa, Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 10(5), 566-573, 2000), the loading of molecular shuttles is a complex process which is relatively poorly understood. Brunner’s publication is a big step in the quest for an engineering understanding of the loading process.

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Lab Chip, 2007, 7, 1263 - 1271, DOI: 10.1039/b707301a
[b]Cargo pick-up from engineered loading stations by kinesin driven molecular shuttles[/b]

Christian Brunner, Christian Wahnes and Viola Vogel

Exploiting biological motors ex vivo to transport and distribute cargo with high spatial control, as done by cells, requires that we learn how molecular shuttles (microtubules propelled by kinesins) can pick up cargo from defined surface regions (loading stations). The main challenge of building microfabricated cargo loading stations is to adjust the sum of non-covalent interactions such that the station stably holds on to the cargo under static conditions, but allows for transfer when a gliding microtubule collides with station-bound cargo and starts to pull on it. Successful pick-up of cargo could be observed using biotin–anti-biotin interactions and hybridized oligonucleotides. The effect of different tethering chemistries on the efficiency of cargo pick-up was tested.
[img]http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/2928/b707301aga2f3728zs3.jpg[/img]
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