The effect of crowder charge in a model polymer-colloid system for macromolecular crowding: Polymer structure and dynamics

Swomitra Palit, Lilin He, William A. Hamilton, Arun Yethiraj, Anand Yethiraj

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9 Scopus citations

Abstract

We have examined the effect of crowder particle charge on macromolecular structure, studied via small-angle neutron scattering, and translational dynamics, studied via pulsed-field gradient NMR, in addition to bulk viscosity measurements, in a polymer macromolecule (polyethylene glycol) - nanoparticle crowder (polysucrose, Ficoll70) model system, in the case where polymer size and crowder size are comparable. While there are modest effects of crowder charge on polymer dynamics at relatively low packing fractions, there is only a tiny effect at the high packing fractions that represent the limit of molecular crowding. We find, via different measures of macromolecular mobility, that the mobility of the flexible polymer in the crowding limit is 10-100 times larger than that of the compact, spherical crowder in spite of their similar size, implying that the flexible polymer chain is able to squeeze through crowder interstices.

Original languageEnglish
Article number114902
JournalJournal of Chemical Physics
Volume147
Issue number11
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 21 2017

Funding

This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. A portion of this research used resources at the High Flux Isotope Reactor, a DOE Office of Science User Facility operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. We thank William Fissell for generously providing us with charged Ficoll70, and John Bech-hoefer, Jure Dobnikar, and Stefan Wallin for the useful discussions. We are also grateful to Valerie Booth and Donna Jackman for providing us with the cell lysate, as well as for DLS characterizations of Ficoll70.

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