Dip Pen Nanolithography Used to Quantify Forces Exerted by Single Receptor Molecules

NanoInk’s NanoFabrication Systems Division is pleased to announce that Emory University recently purchased a Dip Pen Nanolithography® (DPN®) system to quantify the forces exerted by single receptor molecules in real time across entire cells or tissues. Dip Pen Nanolithography is a direct write, tip-based lithography technique capable of multi-component deposition of a wide range of materials with nanoscale registry. It can fabricate multiplexed, customized patterns with feature sizes as small as 50 nanometers or as big as 10 microns on a variety of substrates including glass, plastic, gold and silicon. Emory is located in Atlanta, Georgia and is recognized internationally as one of the nation’s leading research universities.


“We are very excited about coupling Dip Pen Nanolithography with our newly developed method for force sensing to directly print nanoscale arrays of tension sensors. One of the biggest questions in the field of mechano-transduction pertains to the role of receptor clustering in force transmission. We plan on addressing this question by investigating the integrin, Notch, and EGF receptors using this hybrid nanotechnology-biophysics approach in living cells,” said Khalid Salaita, assistant professor of Chemistry at Emory University. “I have used Dip Pen Nanolithography for almost a decade now and I’m confident that it will allow us to push the frontiers of understanding the mechano-chemistry of cells.”


“Dip Pen Nanolithography provides a set of capabilities that are not available in any other nanolithography method,” said Tom Warwick, NannoInk’s general manager of NanoInk’s NanoFabrication Systems Division. “We look forward to seeing the innovations and breakthroughs that will soon come from Khalid Salaita and his team at Emory University using the high-throughput afforded by 2D DPN and Polymer Pen Lithography techniques.”

Professor Salaita and Yoshie Narui, his graduate student, previously used Dip Pen Nanolithography to develop a new method for controlling ligand spatial organization that holds potential for investigating supramolecular protein assemblies in living cells.