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Micropatterned agarose gels for stamping arrays of proteins and gradients of proteins
Author(s) -
Mayer Michael,
Yang Jerry,
Gitlin Irina,
Gracias David H.,
Whitesides George M.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
proteomics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.26
H-Index - 167
eISSN - 1615-9861
pISSN - 1615-9853
DOI - 10.1002/pmic.200300748
Subject(s) - micropatterning , agarose , stamping , protein microarray , microcontact printing , chemistry , chromatography , materials science , nanotechnology , biophysics , dna microarray , biochemistry , biology , gene , metallurgy , gene expression
We describe a method for repetitive and rapid formation of planar microarrays and gradients of proteins using patterned agarose stamps. It demonstrates: (i) micropatterning of agarose gels with feature sizes as small as 2 μm; (ii) inking of posts (diameter 50–1000 μm) on patterned agarose stamps with one or multiple (here, eight) proteins and repetitive stamping of patterns (>100 times in the case of one protein) and arrays (20 times in the case of eight proteins) without the need for intermediate re‐inking; (iii) transferring spots of proteins with good homogeneity in surface coverage to glass slides; (iv) applying this technique to surface‐based immunoassays; (v) stamping that requires only sub‐nanomolar amounts of protein (typically ∼3 μg in ∼0.6 μL of solution); (vi) stamping without the need for drying of the proteins, as opposed to stamping with stamps made of poly(dimethylsiloxane); and (vii) patterning gradients of proteins by allowing two proteins to diffuse toward each other in an agarose stamp, followed by printing the protein gradients onto a surface.