Molecular screening on a compact disc

Abstract

A method is described to screen the recognition between small molecule ligands and biomolecules using a conventional compact disc (CD) player. A procedure was developed to attach ligands to the reading face of a CD by activating the terminus of polycarbonate, a common polymer composite within the reading face of a CD. Terminal residues of the polycarbonate surface 1 were phosphorylated by reaction with ethyl-(N,N)-diisopropylamine-buffered dichloro-(N,N)-diisopropylaminophosphate to yield surface-bound chlorophosphate 2. Ligands containing a primary alcohol were condensed with 2 providing a polycarbonate capped with phosphodiester linked ligands 3–6. Displays were generated on the surface of a CD by printing tracks of ligands 3–6 on the disc with an inkjet printer. Using this method, discs were created with entire assemblies of ligand molecules distributed into separate blocks. A molecular array was developed by assembling collections of these blocks to correlate with the CDROM-XA formatted data stored within the digital layer of the disc. Regions of the disc containing a given ligand or set of ligands was marked by its spatial position using the tracking and header information. Recognition between surface expressed ligands and biomolecules was screened by an error determination routine.