Attachment of Motile Bacterial Cells to Prealigned Holed Microarrays

Abstract

Construction of biomotors is an exciting area of scientific research that holds great promise for the development of new technologies with broad potential applications in areas such as the energy industry and medicine. Herein, we demonstrate the fabrication of prealigned microarrays of motile Escherichia coli bacterial cells on SiOx substrates. To prepare these arrays, holed surfaces with a gold layer on the bottom of the holes were utilized. The attachment of bacteria to the holes was achieved via nonspecific interactions using poly-l-lysine hydrobromide (PLL). Our data suggest that a single motile bacterial cell can be selectively attached to an individual hole on a surface and bacterial cell binding can be controlled by altering the pH, with the greatest occupancy occurring at pH 7.8. Cells attached to hole arrays remained motile for at least 4 h. These data indicate that holed surface structures provide a promising footprint for the attachment of motile bacterial cells to form high-density site-specific functional bacterial microarrays.

Efficient surface modification of biomaterial to prevent biofilm formation and the attachment of microorganisms

“…The same reckoning was applied to the interpretation of reduced bacterial attachment to surfaces with topographic attributes of smaller dimension than that of the cell (Edwards and Rutenberg 2001). Regularity of the nanoscopic features of the surface was also shown to alter bacterial attachment preferences (Díaz et al 2007;Rowan et al 2002;Rozhok et al 2006;Whitehead et al 2005). Surfaces with regularly distributed pits of 1 and 2 μm were demonstrated to enhance the extent of attachment of P. aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus, whereas topographies characterised by irregularly scattered 0.2 and 0.5 μm did not instil the same effect (Whitehead et al 2005).…”

Immunoimmobilization of Living Salmonella for Fundamental Studies and Biosensor Applications

“…Thus, it is possible for bacteria to adhere to a positively charged substrate prepared by modifying the surface using positively charged polymers or silanes. Various bacteria have been attached to substrates decorated with polylysine (Rozhok et al 2006;Rozhok et al 2005), polyethyleneimmine (Razatos et al 1998), amino-terminated silanes (Arnoldi et al 1998), gelatin (Doktycz et al 2003) and alginate . However, unlike eukaryotic cells, bacterial cells are still very challenging to immobilize reliably and reproducibly under their physiological conditions using positively charged polymers.…”

Fabrication of nanocomposites and hybrid materials using microbial biotemplates

“…1). For example, motile Escherichia coli cells can be easily attached to a chemically modified and prefabricated surfaces through electrostatic interactions that exist between negatively charged groups on bacterial cell surface and positively charged poly(L-lysine) assemblies [25]. In another investigation, micro-holes were chemically modified through a soft lithographic process.…”

“…This concept can be further developed to design and fabricate microdevices based [25][26][27][29][30][31] on bacterial cells to study the interactions between cells and their surroundings, biosensing and biodetection, smallmolecule screening, single-cell manipulation and analysis, biomaterials fabrication, and bioenergy synthesis [29]. For example, living bacteria were inserted into a microwell array formed at one end of an imaging fiber bundle, to be used as a biosensor for genotoxin monitoring.…”