Bioelectronic silicon nanowire devices using functional membrane proteins

Abstract

Modern means of communication rely on electric fields and currents to carry the flow of information. In contrast, biological systems follow a different paradigm that uses ion gradients and currents, flows of small molecules, and membrane electric potentials. Living organisms use a sophisticated arsenal of membrane receptors, channels, and pumps to control signal transduction to a degree that is unmatched by manmade devices. Electronic circuits that use such biological components could achieve drastically increased functionality; however, this approach requires nearly seamless integration of biological and manmade structures. We present a versatile hybrid platform for such integration that uses shielded nanowires (NWs) that are coated with a continuous lipid bilayer. We show that when shielded silicon NW transistors incorporate transmembrane peptide pores gramicidin A and alamethicin in the lipid bilayer they can achieve ionic to electronic signal transduction by using voltage-gated or chemically gated ion transport through the membrane pores.bionanoelectronics ͉ ion channels ͉ silicon nanowires ͉ lipid bilayers ͉ membrane transport

Lipid-nanostructure hybrids and their applications in nanobiotechnology

“…Selective ion transportation through gramicidin A and alamethicin pores reconstituted in lipid bilayers on Si nanowires were designed as a chemical and applied voltage-triggered electronic signal transduction model. 68 Active ion transport was monitored by adopting additional biological components such as a protein ion pump and Na þ /K þ -ATPase on the surface of a CNT transistor. 69 Instead of generating an ionic gradient across the membrane, the molecular binding to the SLB directly affects the electrical behavior of the underlying CNT field-effect transistor (FET) via surface charge modulation.…”

Phospholipid film in electrolyte-gated organic field-effect transistors

“…To date, lipid bilayers [2] also including ion-channels [3], have been implemented in a field-effect transistor (FET) structure for pH and ionic detection in general. The binding of a protein to a lipid monolayer or bilayer surface has been investigated too [4].…”

Bioelectronic Light‐Gated Transistors with Biologically Tunable Performance

“…This lipid bilayer performs two functions: it shields the nanowire from the solution species and serves as a native-like environment for membrane proteins that preserves their functionality, integrity, and vectorality. In the past, we showed that this architecture allows us to couple passive ion transport [ 8 ] and active ATP-driven ion transport to the electronic signaling. [ 9 ] In this work, we achieve two goals.…”