Novel measuring technique for biological adhesion forces using AFM

원자현미경을 이용한 생체물질의 접착력 측정기술 개발

The study on the interaction forces of some biological materials is important to understanding biological phenomena and their application to practical purpose. This paper introduces a measuring technique for biological adhesive forces using the AFM(Atomic Force Microscope). Since no standardized thesis on adhesive forces exist, the adhesive forces is defined as adhesive forces against a hardened surface of biological materials. To grant the results are meaningful, which is based on the understanding the surface characteristics of biological materials using the AFM, a nominal value of average adhesive force per unit area should be measured. Therefore the modified AFM probe with small micro glass bead was proposed so that it can guarantee the required contact area for measuring the average adhesive forces. A pyrex glass substrate with circular patterns, which was fabricated by micromachining technique, is introduced in order to controll the contact area. The two types of mussel adhesive proteins, Celltak and recombinant-MGFP5, were tested by the proposed measuring method. The test results show that the adhesive force of the mussel adhesive proteins can be reliably measured by use of this method.