Assembly of oriented virus arrays by chemo-selective ligation methods and nanolithography techniques

The present work describes our ongoing efforts towards the creation of nano-scaled ordered arrays of protein/virus covalently attached to site-specific chemical linkers patterned by different nanolithograpy techniques. We will present a new and efficient solid-phase approach for the synthesis of chemically modified long alkyl-thiols. These compounds can be used to introduce chemoselective reacting groups onto gold and silicon-based surfaces. Furthermore, these modified thiols have been used to create nanometric patterns by using different nanolithography techniques. We will show that this patterns can react chemoselectively with proteins and/or virus which have been chemically or recombinantly modified to contain complementary chemical groups at specific positions thus resulting in the oriented attachment of the protein or virus to the surface.