Viral Particles and the Construction of Arrays on Solid Supports

Immobilization of Viral Particles and the Construction of Arrays on Solid Supports 

The previous section summarized the available addressable groups on the surface of CPMV and described functionalization studies that have been done in solution. This section will focus on approaches where the particles have been immobilized on surfaces, and highlight a recent study in which CPMV particles were used to construct three-dimensional arrays [109]. 

Immobilization of biomolecules and the assembly of biomolecules in defined arrays is a desired requirement of nanobiotechnology. Thin films of immobilized proteins on solid supports are of growing interest and find applications in biosensors, information processing, optics, and biomedicine [113-115], 

To further extend the utility of CPMV virions as tools in nanobiotechnology, it was shown that CPMV particles can be utilized as building blocks for the construction of monolayer, bilayer, and multilayer arrays on surfaces in a controlled manner [109]. CPMV virions were labeled with two different ligands fluorescent dyes that enabled differential detection, and biotin molecules that allowed the 

In detail, viral wild-type particles of one set were labeled with the fluorescent dye AlexaFluor (AF) 488 and biotin both groups were attached to surface available lysines. Another batch was labeled with AF568 and biotin, also at addressable lysines. Both types of building block, in the following referred to as CPMV-biotin-AF488 and CPMV-biotin-AF568, were characterized by TEM, UV-visible spectroscopy, native gel electrophoresis, and dot blot studies. TEM studies verified that the particles remained intact after chemical modification. UV-visible spectroscopy confirmed covalent modification and also allowed quantification of the number of labels per particle the particles displayed around 40 biotin moieties and around 200 dyes. 

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