Quartz crystal microbalance binding interactions

Comparison of two analytical approaches, atomic force microscopy (AFM) and quartz crystal microbalance, for studying the binding of Con A to glycosylated carboxypeptidase, demonstrated that both could determine the quantitative parameters characterizing the interaction.65 Quantitative analyses of the interaction of Calreticulin (CRT), which is a soluble molecular chaperone of the endoplasmic reticulum, with various... 

A potentially important development for the future of biomimetic research was published recently. Using a procedure developed by Whitesides, nucleophiles micropattemed on a gold surface were used as initiators to prepare poly(Y-benzyl-L-glutamate). Thus, an array of poly(amino acid) layers covalently attached to the surface was obtained. These would potentially act as mediators of biomimetic reactions. German workers have described the production of protein-DNA double and triple layers adsorbed on smfaces. Adhesion between layers was provided by biotin-streptavadin interactions and binding was detected by a quartz crystal microbalance. These studies may have some relevance to the understanding of protein DNA interactions at interfaces in biological systems. 

As a consequence, researchers from different disciplines of the life sciences ask for efficient and sensitive techniques to characterize protein binding to and release from natural and artificial membranes. Native biological membranes are often substituted by artificial lipid bilayers bearing only a limifed number of components and rendering the experiment more simple, which permits the extraction of real quantitative information from binding experiments. Adsorption and desorption are characterized by rate constants that reflect the interaction potential between the protein and the membrane interface. Rate constants of adsorption and desorption can be quantified by means of sensitive optical techniques such as surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy (SPR), ellipsometry (ELL), reflection interference spectroscopy (RIfS), and total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy (TIRE), as well as acoustic/mechanical devices such as the quartz crystal microbalance (QCM)... 

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