Roughness effect on vesicle adhesion characterised by a novel micropipette-based technique

Numerous biological processes have to go through a cell adhesion process, which make the fundamental study of the adhesion of cells on solid substrate a key research topic in cellular biophysics. We will present our work on the adhesion of a single vesicle on a substrate. A vesicle is held at the end of a micropipette mounted on a micromanipulator and put into contact with a surface. We developed a novel technique to directly measure adhesion using the spring-constant of an L-shaped micropipette when pulling the vesicle from the substrate. The substrate is made of a micropatterned polymer film coated with a thin layer of gold to promote adhesion with the vesicle. The effect of the surface roughness can therefore be carefully characterized.