Materials and Surface Engineering for Biotechnology Applications

Jeong Hyun Seo*

School of Chemical Engineering, Yeungnam University, Gyeongsan 712-749, South Korea

*E-mail : jhseo78@yu.ac.kr

In order to use biological Materials such as carbohydrate, protein, and DNA in biosensor and biomedical applications, it is necessary to develop immobilization technology and surface engineering techniques. Carbohydrate, which is very functional and essential biomaterial in living organism, is generally used as an energy source, but plays many critical role in our body such as protein folding, protein stability, communications, and immunological processes through specific interaction. Thus, carbohydrate should be immobilized on specific surface to characterize its role and interactions, that’s why we developed novel carbohydrate modification method and investigated the interactions using diverse analytical tools. Surface engineering for multiple cytokines detection was conducted. Functional groups as self-assembled monolayer (SAM) were conjugated , which enabled higher amounts of proteins or Abs to immobilize on glass substrate. In addition, another functional group (acryl) was introduced for surface patterning (PEG microwell) using PEG-DA. Therefore, single cell (macrophage and T cell) was captured inside each microwell and produced cytokines were able to detected by immobilized Abs. Collectively, we performed material and surface engineering and we believe that  those technologies may be applied in diverse biotechnological applications in the future.