Acute subcellular protein targeting is a powerful tool to study biological networks. However, signaling at the plasma membrane is highly dynamic, making it difficult to study in space and time. In particular, sustained local control of molecular function is challenging owing to the lateral diffusion of plasma membrane targeted molecules. Herein we present "molecular activity painting" (MAP), a novel technology which combines photoactivatable chemically induced dimerization (pCID) with immobilized artificial receptors. The immobilization of artificial receptors by surface-immobilized antibodies blocks lateral diffusion, enabling rapid and stable "painting" of signaling molecules and their activity at the plasma membrane with micrometer precision. Using this method, we show that painting of the RhoA-myosin activator GEF-H1 induces patterned acto-myosin contraction inside living cells.
The construction and operation of a low-cost plotter for fabrication of microarrays for multiplexed single-cell analyses is reported. The printing head consists of polymeric pyramidal pens mounted on a rotation stage installed on an aluminium frame. This construction enables printing of microarrays onto glass substrates mounted on a tilt stage, controlled by a Lab-View operated user interface. The plotter can be assembled by typical academic workshops from components of less than 15,000 Euro. The functionality of the instrument is demonstrated by printing DNA microarrays on the area of 0.5 cm2 using up to three different oligonucleotides. Typical feature sizes are 5 μm diameter with a pitch of 15 μm, leading to densities of up to 10(4)-10(5) spots/mm2. The fabricated DNA microarrays are used to produce sub-cellular scale arrays of bioactive epidermal growth factor peptides by means of DNA-directed immobilization. The suitability of these biochips for cell biological studies is demonstrated by specific recruitment, concentration, and activation of EGF receptors within the plasma membrane of adherent living cells. This work illustrates that the presented plotter gives access to bio-functionalized arrays usable for fundamental research in cell biology, such as the manipulation of signal pathways in living cells at subcellular resolution.
Protein-interaction arrays were generated in living cells by the interaction of bait-presenting artificial receptor constructs (bait-PARCs) with micrometer-scaled antibody surface patterns (see figure). This method was applied to simultaneously monitor the interaction kinetics of a prey protein with two distinct bait proteins in individual living cells
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