Nanomaterial-based approaches to the study of membrane signaling

Abstract

The plasma membrane is a complex, dynamic, and multifunctional microenvironment whose components mediate much of cellular communication. The size, unique properties, and ability to target and tailor nanoscale materials has generated great interest in their biological application. In this thesis, I will outline two nanoscale material-based approaches I have developed for the manipulation and study of plasma membrane related signaling. Although structural changes have been actively studied both in vitro and in vivo for many novel biosensor platforms, characterization studies defining the functional effects of recording materials remain more scarce. In this vein, in the first part of this thesis, I used an array of electrical and optical approaches to gain mechanistic insight into the biological effects of chronic growth of neurons on graphene substrates. These findings then led us to investigate the feasibility of using graphene to acutely modulate cell signaling pathways, which my work demonstrates for both membrane signal output (e.g. neurotransmitter release) and membrane signal input (e.g. receptor activation). Lastly, work in this thesis introduces an RNA aptamer-based approach for monovalent quantum dot hybridization and demonstrates its utility for single particle tracking of synaptic vesicles.