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Microfluidic Integration of Captured Microtubule Bundles using Silicon Nanotweezers
◎Quentin Delouvee・Mehmet Cagatay Tarhan・Laurent Jalabert・藤田博之(東京大学生産技術研究所)
Microtubules (MT), one of the main elements of cytoskeleton, have a crucial role in neuron functioning. Any deficiencies involving microtubules and associated proteins (MAPs) often result in severe neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s and similar tauopathies. Therefore, a reliable method is required to test microdubules and proteins involved with microtubule stabilization. A real-time, continuous monitoring of the molecule attachment on microtubules with a high precision is an important step to build a device for disease diagnosis. Silicon NanoTweezers (SNT) have been introduced to observe the mechanical changes in DNA as demonstrated earlier. As attachment of different proteins change the mechanical properties of microtubules, we would like to use SNT to explore the changes in the mechanical properties of microtubules due attached proteins. To achieve this objective, we need to establish an integrated platform to conduct SNT experiments. Therefore, here we are demonstrating the first step, as capturing microtubules to integrate with the microfluidic system.