ABSTRACT
Recapitulating cellular interactions and cell microenvironments have been shown to be effective in controlling the cell shape [6], organization [7,8], phenotype [9,10], and function [11,12]. Patterning of cell-interacting proteins is a widely used and versatile way of patterning cells and cell microenvironments in vitro. These cell-interacting proteins are often cell-adhesive proteins such as extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins, and recently, peptides derived from these proteins have been used toward the same end [13-16]. To micropattern cell-interacting proteins or peptides, microfabrication techniques that are mostly based on photolithography were borrowed from integrated circuit industry and have been modied and exploited extensively. When applying these fabrication techniques to cells and biomolecules, several additional factors such as denaturation of the proteins, toxicity to cells, biocompatibility, and robustness in cell culture conditions should be considered [16-18]. Over the years, photolithography techniques have paved the way to soft lithography techniques [19-21] and more recently computer-based direct write techniques [63-65].
