ABSTRACT
Several biodegradable and nonbiodegradable polymers can be used to fabricate hydrogels on which cells can be cultured. This experiment will utilize polyacrylamide (PA) because it is easy to vary stiffness by changing the ratio of the monomer, acrylamide, and the cross-linker, bis-acrylamide (Pelham and Wang 1997). Other advantages of PA include that (1) it is transparent, allowing observation of cells growing on top or of objects suspended within the hydrogel; (2) the pore size of the hydrogel is on the order of 100 nm, which prevents cell in¦ltration; and (3) passive adsorption of proteins to acrylamide is minimal, which means that only adhesive molecules intentionally cross-linked to the surface can serve as ligands for cell attachment.
