Figure 1.

Schematic illustration of the experimental approach. A) SEM of gold nanodots on the surface of a glass coverslip. B) Schematic of the nanodot – SLB platform: cancer cells expressing EphA2 deposited on this surface can interact with molecules of ephrin-A1 tethered to the nanodots or to the lipids within the SLB (or both). C) FRAP images at different time points show the recovery of a Texas Red-DHPE SLB across the entire glass coverslip. This confirms that the membrane fluidity is not affected by the presence of the nanodots as previously reported.¹³ The dark diagonal stripe (indicated by the white arrow) across the FRAP images is a result of the dipping process for nanodot functionalization and depicts the border between the bare glass side and the nanodot patterned side.