Abstract:
Interactions between small molecules were investigated on microarrays. The applied surface chemistry allowed a simple generation of the arrays and at the same time, for future questions, the suppression of cell growth outside the arrays. Confocal fluorescence microscopy proved to be useful for both optimisation of the surface chemistry and investigation of receptor-ligand-interactions weaker than those usually occurring on DNA or antibody microarrays. In combination with binding titrations, confocal detection could be applied to determine binding constants in an array format for vancomycin as model system. Also, the activation state of a protein, depending on a preceding stimulation of cells, could be investigated by incubating microarrays with crude cell lysate. Further experiments determined the influence of different fluorophores on the observed interactions and the influence of receptor density on the strength of binding.