Significant advancements have been made towards exploitation of naturally available molecular motors and their associated cytoskeletal filaments in nanotechnological applications. For instance, myosin motors and actin filaments from muscle have been used with the aims to establish new approaches in biosensing and network-based biocomputation. The basis for these developments is a version of the in vitro motility assay (IVMA) where surface-adsorbed myosin motors propel the actin filaments along suitably derivatized nano-scale channels on nanostructured chips. These chips are generally assembled into custom-made microfluidic flow cells. For effective applications, particularly in biocomputation, it is important to appreciably prolong function of the biological system. Here, we systematically investigated potentially critical factors necessary to achieve this, such as biocompatibility of different components of the flow cell, the degree of air exposure, assay solution composition and nanofabrication methods. After optimizing these factors we prolonged the function of actin and myosin in nanodevices for biocomputation from <20 min to >60 min. In addition, we demonstrated that further optimizations could increase motility run times to >20 h. Of great importance for the latter development was a switch of glucose oxidase in the chemical oxygen scavenger system (glucose oxidase–glucose–catalase) to pyranose oxidase, combined with the use of blocking actin (non-fluorescent filaments that block dead motors). To allow effective testing of these approaches we adapted commercially available microfluidic channel slides, for the first time demonstrating their usefulness in the IVMA. As part of our study, we also demonstrate that myosin motor fragments can be stored at −80 °C for more than 10 years before use for nanotechnological purposes. This extended shelf-life is important for the sustainability of network-based biocomputation.

The in vitro motility assay allows studies of muscle contraction through observation of actin filament propulsion by surface-adsorbed myosin motors or motor fragments isolated from muscle. A possible problem is that motility may be compromised by nonfunctional, "dead", motors, obtained in the isolation process. Here we investigate the effects on motile function of two approaches designed to eliminate the effects of these dead motors. We first tested the removal of heavy meromyosin (HMM) molecules with ATP-insensitive "dead" heads by pelleting them with actin filaments, using ultracentrifugation in the presence of 1 mM MgATP ("affinity purification"). Alternatively we incubated motility assay flow cells, after HMM surface adsorption, with non-fluorescent "blocking actin" (1 µM) to block the dead heads. Both affinity purification and use of blocking actin increased the fraction of motile filaments compared to control conditions. However, affinity purification significantly reduced the actin sliding speed in five out of seven experiments on silanized surfaces and in one out of four experiments on nitrocellulose surfaces. Similar effects on velocity were not observed with the use of blocking actin. However, a reduced speed was also seen (without affinity purification) if HMM or myosin subfragment 1 was mixed with 1 mM MgATP before and during surface adsorption. We conclude that affinity purification can produce unexpected effects that may complicate the interpretation of in vitro motility assays and other experiments with surface adsorbed HMM, e.g. single molecule mechanics experiments. The presence of MgATP during incubation with myosin motor fragments is critical for the complicating effects.

The guided gliding of cytoskeletal filaments, driven by biomolecular motors on nano/microstructured chips, enables novel applications in biosensing and biocomputation. However, expensive and time-consuming chip production hampers the developments. It is therefore important to establish protocols to regenerate the chips, preferably without the need to dismantle the assembled microfluidic devices which contain the structured chips. We here describe a novel method toward this end. Specifically, we use the small, nonselective proteolytic enzyme, proteinase K to cleave all surface-adsorbed proteins, including myosin and kinesin motors. Subsequently, we apply a detergent (5% SDS or 0.05% Triton X100) to remove the protein remnants. After this procedure, fresh motor proteins and filaments can be added for new experiments. Both, silanized glass surfaces for actin-myosin motility and pure glass surfaces for microtubule-kinesin motility were repeatedly regenerated using this approach. Moreover, we demonstrate the applicability of the method for the regeneration of nano/microstructured silicon-based chips with selectively functionalized areas for supporting or suppressing gliding motility for both motor systems. The results substantiate the versatility and a promising broad use of the method for regenerating a wide range of protein-based nano/microdevices.