Assembly and detection of viruses and biological molecules on inorganic surfaces

This work is composed of three distinct, albeit related, projects. Each project is an exploration of the ways in which interactions between inorganic surfaces and biological molecules can be advantageously exploited. The first project entitled, Biomolecular Recognition of Crystal Defects extended the phage display technique to the detection of crystal defects. The system used is based on the M13 bacteriophage with 7-residue constrained random sequence on protein III. After considerable experimentation a procedure described as 'Diffuse Selection' was developed for selecting defects on crystal surfaces. Challenges occur because it is difficult to drive phage display towards the selection of particular surface features as opposed to whole surfaces. After multiple iterations, diffuse selection was optimized and consensus sequences were achieved. Virus binding was characterized using Atomic Force Microscopy, Fluorescene Microscopy and Titration. Using a simple bimolecular model, the binding sequence identified through this work is shown to have a binding constant 100,000 times better than a random peptide sequence. The second project entitled, Surface Patterning of Genetically Programmed Viruses, developed a generalizable approach to patterning viruses regardless of the genetic modification made to the virus. Genetic modifications are made in order to create viruses which will construct inorganic materials on their bodies in the appropriate chemical environment. Three generalizable virus patterning approaches were developed based on hydrophobic, electrostatic and covalent binding approaches respectively. This work showed successful patterning using all three approaches, but only the covalent approach was shown to be an effective way to actually construct materials on the genetically programmed viruses.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Sinensky, Asher Keeling

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Angela M. Belcher.

• Materials Science and Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/42139

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/42139