Sunday, 07 September, 2014
From genes to protein mechanics on a chip
M. Otten, W. Ott, M. Jobst, L. Milles, T. Verdorfer, D. Pippig, M. Nash, and H. Gaub -
Nature Methods, Vol. 11 (11), pp 11271130 (2014)
Single-molecule force spectroscopy enables mechanical testing of individual proteins, but low experimental throughput limits the ability to screen constructs in parallel. We describe a microfluidic platform for on-chip expression, covalent surface attachment and measurement of single-molecule protein mechanical properties. A dockerin tag on each protein molecule allowed us to perform thousands of pulling cycles using a single cohesin-modified cantilever. The ability to synthesize and mechanically probe protein libraries enables high-throughput mechanical phenotyping.