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Highly-Efficient Guiding of Motile Microtubules on Non-Topographical Motor Patterns

Molecular motors, highly-efficient biological nano-machines, hold the potential to be employed for a wide range of nanotechnological applications. Towards this end, kinesin, dynein or myosin motor proteins are commonly surface-immobilized within engineered environments in order to transport cargo attached to cytoskeletal filaments. Being able to flexibly control the direction of filament motion – in particular on planar, non-topographical surfaces – has, however, remained challenging. Here, we demonstrate the applicability of a UV-laser-based ablation technique to programmably generate highly-localized patterns of functional kinesin-1 motors with different shapes and sizes on PLL-g-PEG-coated polystyrene surfaces. Straight and curved motor tracks with widths of less than 500 nm could be generated in a highly-reproducible manner and proved to reliably guide gliding microtubules. Though dependent on track curvature, the characteristic travel lengths of the microtubules on the tracks significantly exceeded earlier predictions. Moreover, we experimentally verified the performance of complex kinesin-1 patterns, recently designed by evolutionary algorithms, for controlling the global directionality of microtubule motion on large-area substrates.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:30616
Date07 September 2018
CreatorsReuther, Cordula, Mittasch, Matthäus, Naganathan, Sundar R., Grill, Stephan, Diez, Stefan
PublisherACS Publ.
Source SetsHochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden
LanguageGerman
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typedoc-type:article, info:eu-repo/semantics/article, doc-type:Text
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Relation10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b02606, 1530-6992, 10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b02606

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