Nanopatterning Peptides as Bifunctional Inks for Templated Assembly

Peptides selected via cell-surface or phage display for their ability to bind inorganic surfaces can be used as inks in dip-pen nanolithography with sub-100-nm resolution (see image). Two different biotinylated peptides are chosen because they exhibit preferential binding to either gold or silica surfaces and can be used as bifunctional linkers to direct the site-specific assembly of fluorescently-labeled streptavidin.