Actomyosin motility on nanostructured surfaces

• We have here, for the first time, used nanofabrication techniques to reproduce aspects of the ordered actomyosin arrangement in a muscle cell. The adsorption of functional heavy meromyosin (HMM) to five different resist polymers was first assessed. One group of resists (MRL-6000.1XP and ZEP-520) consistently exhibited high quality motility of actin filaments after incubation with HMM. A second group (PMMA-200, PMMA-950, and MRI-9030) generally gave low quality of motility with only few smoothly moving filaments. Based on these findings electron beam lithography was applied to a bi-layer resist system with PMMA-950 on top of MRL-6000.1XP. Grooves (100-200 nm wide) in the PMMA layer were created to expose the MRL-6000.1XP surface for adsorption of HMM and guidance of actin filament motility. This guidance was quite efficient allowing no U-turns of the filaments and approximately 20 times higher density of moving filaments in the grooves than on the surrounding PMMA.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Biologi (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Biological Sciences (hsv//eng)

Keyword

beam lithography

electron

nanotechnology

resist polymer

motility assay

actin

myosin

atomic force microscope

Publication and Content Type

art (subject category)

ref (subject category)