Berlin 2018 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik
CPP 69: Focus: Polymers in Multi-Component and Aqueous Solutions I - organized by Jens-Uwe Sommer and Debashish Mukherji
CPP 69.1: Topical Talk
Donnerstag, 15. März 2018, 15:00–15:30, C 130
Biomimetic functions of hydrophobic-hydrophilic random copolymers — •Monica Olvera de la Cruz1, Trung Nguyen1, Baofu Qiao1, and Ting Xu2 — 1Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA — 2University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
Random copolymers with hydrophobic and hydrophilic groups are multicomponent systems with important functionalities for biomimetic applications. They can dissolve in organic solvents and in water and as such can be used to disperse and stabilize enzymes in unfavorable solvents. In this talk, we address the key factors that govern the ability of random copolymers to adsorb to biological substrates including proteins. Our findings show that for sufficiently strong solvent selectivity there exists an optimal value of the copolymer adsorbing fraction that maximizes the surface coverage. The existence of the optimal adsorbing fraction is shown to result from the balance between the entropic and energetic gains accompanying the adsorption process. Full atom and coarse-grained simulations show that there is a clear connection between substrate surface composition and fraction of copolymer adsorbed, and that the adsorption is highly sequence selective by the substrate composition. The results in this work set the stage for computational design of random copolymers for stabilizing and delivering enzimes across multiple media.