Atomic Force Microscopic Visualization of Identical Site on Cell Surface with Different Probes

摘要

For these several years Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) has been widely used for visualization of biological samples with high resolution on nanometer scale. Whereas any biological information regarding specific reactions, such as immunological function, cannot be detected because of non-specificity of molecular force reacting between a probe and sample surface. The aim of this study is to visualize a function of a cell, in particular, to detect specific reaction on surface of a cell membrane by AFM. The point of our method is subtraction of the data measured by different probes: by subtracting the data measured by an antibody-fixed probe from those by a regular one, immunological reaction can be determined. As a first step, we developed the technique which enabled AFM to visualize the same area on sample surface with different probes.