Neurotransmitter analog tethered to a silicon platform for neuro‐bioMEMS applications

Abstract

The design of chemically well-defined, machinable surfaces containing neuroactive molecules offers potential for fundamental neuroscience and clinical neural engineering applications. Here we report the assembly and characterization of silicon platforms containing a tethered form of muscimol. Muscimol, an analog of the inhibitory neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), is a potent agonist at postsynaptic GABA(A) and GABA(C) receptors. Surfaces were assembled using covalent avidin conjugation to silanized silicon followed by high-affinity avidin-biotin binding of a biotinylated derivative of muscimol (muscimol-biotin). Contact angle measurements, ellipsometry, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) were conducted to characterize the wettability, thickness, and chemical composition of progressively deposited surface layers. The data demonstrate successful incorporation of a neurotransmitter analog as part of a layered, silicon-based structure possessing robust and specific biomolecular composition. These findings represent a step toward the design of platforms for applications involving control and modulation of neural signaling.

2-Aminoethyl Methylphosphonate, a Potent and Rapidly Acting Antagonist of GABAA-ρ1 Receptors

“…The second objective was to determine whether substitution at any of the carbon atoms of 2-AEMP preserves significant activity of the compound at GABA A -1 receptors. This question is of interest for potential neurobiology applications in which a chainderivatized form of this type of GABA analog could be tethered to an anchoring surface via, for instance, streptavidin (Saifuddin et al, 2003;Nehilla et al, 2004;Vu et al, 2005), to a nanoparticle (Gussin et al, 2006), or to the receptor itself (Volgraf et al, 2006;Numano et al, 2009). 2-AEMP derivatives are relatively easy to prepare, and the key building blocks, phosphonic acids and 2-aminoalcohols, are readily available.…”

High density silanization of nano-silica particles using γ-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES)

“…Amino-terminated silica particles also has a large adsorption capacity and good selectivity for metal ions, such as Cu 2+ , Pb 2+ , Hg 2+ , thus it can be used as a chromatography stationary phase or adsorbent [3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. Since amino groups can react with proteins and DNA, these silica materials have important uses in the separation of biomaterials, enzyme immobilization and targeted medicine [10][11][12][13][14]. In many applications, high surface coverage of amino groups is desired in order to have a large number of active sites on the surface for improving the performance of the nanoparticles.…”

Novel Rapid Protein Coating Technique for Silicon Photonic Biosensor to Improve Surface Morphology and Increase Bioreceptor Density

“…The best fit for the experimental data and for the theoretical model was obtained with a refractive index of 1.42. The extinction coefficient was set to 0 and 0.01 for silane (APTES silanized) and glutaraldehyde (GA), respectively [52]. For the antibody layer and EDC/NHS, the best fit was obtained for a refractive index of 1.45 [53][54][55] and an extinction coefficient of 0.…”