Development of Nanobiotechnology Platforms at Multi-Lengthscale: from Protein Patterns to Cell Sheets

Developing platforms that bridge molecular-scale and supramolecular protein organization and supracellular tissue architecture remains a central challenge in nanobiotechnology. Platforms able to operate effectively across multiple length scales would enable the investigation of physiological and pathological processes in an innovative way, from molecular interactions at the nanoscale up to tissue-level organization. In this framework, this PhD thesis pursues two complementary experimental strategies. In the first, extracellular-matrix protein patterns were fabricated by printing laminin-111 on glass via microcontact printing, while preserving its self-assembled network; this network was resolved by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and, for the first time, by STORM super-resolution microscopy methods, and quantified through a novel method based on Voronoi tessellation and Delaunay triangulation, which gives direct access to inter-molecular distances and void areas. In the second approach, suspended nanofiber substrates were developed, by mean of a technique that enables the solvent-free deposition of sub-400 nm fibers in programmable architectures.