Dendron arrays for the force-based detection of DNA hybridization events

Single-molecule force measurement methods have attracted increasing interest over recent years for the development of novel approaches for biomolecular screening. However, many of these developments are currently hindered by the available biomolecule surface attachment methods, in that it is still not trivial to create surfaces and devices with highly defined surface functionality and/or uniformity. Here we offer a new approach to address such issues based on the formation of dendron arrays. Through the measurement of forces between dendron surfaces functionalized with complementary DNA oligonucleotides, we observed several unique properties of the surfaces modified via this approach. The capability to record attractive or "jump-in" forces associated with molecular binding events is one of them. Additionally, these events occur in greater than 80% of measurements, and the forces are dependent on the number of complementary DNA bases of the associating strands while being insensitive to the measurement rate. Combined with a narrow distribution of both attractive forces and unbinding forces we suggest such functionalized surfaces offer a significant advance for fast and accurate force-based studies of oligonucleotide hybridization.