<title>Production of biomolecule microarrays through laser induced forward transfer</title>

Abstract

Biomolecule microarrays are a kind of biosensors that consist in patterns of different biological molecules immobilized on a solid substrate and capable to bind specifically to their complementary targets. In particular, DNA and protein microarrays have been revealed to be very efficient devices for genen and protein identification, what has converted them in powerful tools for many applications, like clinical diagnose, drug discovery analysis, genomics and proteomics. The production of these devices requires the manipulation of tiny amounts of a liquid solution containing biomolecules without damaging them. In this work laser induced forward transfer (LIFT) has been used for spotting a biomolecule in order to check the viability of this technique for the production of microarrays. A pulsed Nd:YAG laser beam (355 nm wavelength) has been used to transfer droplets of a biomolecule containing solution onto a solid slide. Optical microscopy of the transferred material has been carried out to investigate the morphological characteristics of the droplets obtained under different irradiation conditions. Afterwards, a DNA microarray has been spotted. The viability of the transference has been tested by checking the biological activity of the biomolecule in front of its specific complementary target. This has revealed that, indeed, the LIFT technique is adequate for the production of DNA microarrays.