Patterning of biological molecules

In fact, a tremendous amount of information is available on the structures of biological macromolecules descriptions of structures of proteins and nucleic acids make up major portions of modern textbooks in biochemistry and molecular biology. The Protein Data Bank and the Nucleic Acid Database are online archives that contain sequence and structural data on thousands of specific molecules and complexes of molecules. This structural information comes from in vitro experiments, with structures inferred from the x-ray diffraction patterns of crystallized molecules, spectroscopic measurements using multi-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance, and a host of other methodologies. 

These approaches are time-consuming and limited by the amount of biological materials. A fast method to define recognition patterns of MHC molecules has been introduced by screening synthetic combinatorial peptide libraries [31]. 

There are a variety of other types of nonbilayer lipid structures such as reversed micelles sandwiched between monolayers of the lipid bilayers in vivo, while the main structural pattern of biological membranes is the flat bilayer of lipid molecules. These nonbilayer structures can explain many processes occurring in the living cell, such as fusion, and exo- and endo-cytosis. Because the water in the reversed micelle resembles that adjacent to biological membranes or biological reversed micelle-like microcompartments, reversed micelles may be an appropriate model for investigating biological catalysis at the molecular level [3-5]. 

SECM has been particularly promising for microfabrication and detection of biological molecules, mainly due to the mild patterning conditions and various modes of operation (see also Section 12.4.6.2.3). In contrast, conventional photolithographic techniques are usually limited due to the photoresists, organic solvents, and strong acids and bases that are necessary and are harmful to biological molecules. 

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