Monitoring single-cell infectivity from virus-particle nanoarrays fabricated by parallel dip-pen nanolithography

A novel approach to monitor single-cell infectivity from biologically active virus particles fabricated by the dip-pen nanolithography (DPN)-generated affinity templates, has been presented. The high-resolution of DPN has facilitated the generation of chemical templates small enough to site isolate and control the orientation of individual virus particles. It was shown that when antibodies are immobilized on Zn-carboxylate-rich nanopatterns they can be used to assemble viruses in an active state, and cell infectivity can be monitored by using fluorescence and an enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP). The approach can be extended to study important microbiological events, such as how the number of virus particles, their orientation, and their chemical immobilization and presentation affect cellular infectivity for single and small collections of virus particles.