Open AccessNovel Nano-Device to Measure Voltage-Driven Membrane Transporter Activity
Author(s) -
Rikiya Watanabe,
Naoki Soga,
Hiroyuki Noji
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
ieee transactions on nanotechnology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.574
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1941-0085
pISSN - 1536-125X
DOI - 10.1109/tnano.2015.2498167
Subject(s) - components, circuits, devices and systems , computing and processing
The use of an arrayed lipid bilayer chamber system (ALBiC) enables highly sensitive quantitative analysis of membrane transporter activity, a major target of pharmaceutical research. Although membrane voltage is one of the main driving forces of transporters, the versatility of ALBiC is limited to transporter assays in the absence of membrane voltage, owing to technical limitations with voltage modulation. Here, we report a novel nano-device based on ALBiC (el-ALBiC) containing sub-million lipid bilayer chambers, each equipped with nano-sized electrodes. Since the nano-sized electrodes enable quantitative modulation of membrane voltage, the el-ALBiC is capable of performing highly sensitive detection of the voltage-driven membrane transporter activity. Thus, the novel nano-device el-ALBiC extends the versatility of ALBiC and has potential for further analytical and pharmacological applications, such as drug screening.