posted on 2019-04-03, 00:00authored byPradeep Bugga, Milan Mrksich
Dynamic substrates
for cell culture control the spatial and temporal
presentation of extracellular matrix ligands that interact with adherent
cells. This paper reports a photoactive surface chemistry that can
repeatedly activate regions of the substrate for cell adhesion, spreading,
and migration. The approach uses self-assembled monolayers presenting
the integrin ligand RGD that is caged with a nitrophenyl-based photoprotecting
group. The group is also modified with a maltoheptaose oligosaccharide
to prevent nonspecific protein adsorption and cell attachment. The
peptide is uncaged when irradiated with a laser source at 405 nm on
a microscope to reveal micron-size regions for single cell attachment.
This method is applied to studies of gap junction-mediated communication
between two neighboring cells and requires the patterning of an initial
receiver cell population and then the patterning of a second sender
population to give a culture wherein each pair of cells are separated
by 30 μm. Finally, activation of the region between the cells
permits cell–cell contact and gap junction assembly between
the sender and receiver cells. This example demonstrates the broad
relevance of this method to studying complex phenotypes in cell culture.