Detection of the binding sites with differential method for Atomic Force Microscopy

Hiroshi Okamoto¹, Yuji Ohta², Tomoko Okuda²

1) Graduate School of Engineering, Toyo University, 2100 Kujirai, Kawagoe, Saitama 350-8585, Japan,
2) Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Toyo University, 2100 Kujirai, Kawagoe, Saitama 350-8585, Japan

Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) has become a powerful tool in the fields of biophysics and biochemistry. AFM can be conducted in air as well as in liquid, and it has been widely used to image the structure of biological samples. One of the problems of imaging biological samples with AFM is the lack of specificity. To overcome this drawback, a differential method for AFM images was developed. By subtracting the image with the specific fictionalized tip from the image with the non-specific fictionalized tip, it was possible to map the position of the specific binding sites.