Fringe dielectrophoresis nanoaperture optical trapping with order of magnitude speed-up for unmodified proteins
Date
2023-03-31
Authors
Babaei, Elham
Wright, Demelza
Gordon, Reuven
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Nano Letters
Abstract
Single molecule analysis of proteins in an aqueous environment without modification (e.g., labels or tethers) elucidates their biophysics and interactions relevant to drug discovery. By combining fringe-field dielectrophoresis with nanoaperture optical tweezers we demonstrate an order of magnitude faster time-to-trap for proteins when the counter electrode is outside of the solution. When the counter electrode is inside the solution (the more common configuration found in the literature), electrophoresis speeds up the trapping of polystyrene nanospheres, but this was not effective for proteins in general. Since time-to-trap is critical for high-thoughput analysis, these findings are a major advancement to the nanoaperture optical trapping technique for protein analysis.
Description
Keywords
optical tweezers, dielectrophoresis, single protein analysis, nanoaperture tweezers, plasmonics, nanophotonics
Citation
Babaei, E., Wright, D., & Gordon, R. (2023). Fringe dielectrophoresis nanoaperture optical trapping with order of magnitude speed-up for unmodified proteins. Nano Letters, 23(7), 2877–2882. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c00208