This title appears in the Scientific Report :
2016
Polyelectrolyte complexes from mixtures of oppositely charged filamentous viruses
Polyelectrolyte complexes from mixtures of oppositely charged filamentous viruses
The fd virus is a filamentous bacteriophage with a length of 880 nm and a diameter of 6.6 nm, that was first isolated from sewage. The virus consists of a single-stranded circular DNA molecule packed in a cylindrical capsid of 2,700 identical major coat proteins and a few minor coat proteins at the...
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Personal Name(s): | Buitenhuis, Johan (Corresponding author) |
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Anop, Hanna | |
Contributing Institute: |
Weiche Materie; ICS-3 |
Imprint: |
2016
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Conference: | Ostwald Colloquium of the German Colloid Society, RWTH Aachen (Germany), 2016-09-01 - 2016-09-02 |
Document Type: |
Conference Presentation |
Research Program: |
Functional Macromolecules and Complexes |
Publikationsportal JuSER |
The fd virus is a filamentous bacteriophage with a length of 880 nm and a diameter of 6.6 nm, that was first isolated from sewage. The virus consists of a single-stranded circular DNA molecule packed in a cylindrical capsid of 2,700 identical major coat proteins and a few minor coat proteins at the ends. In the present study the virus is used as a material, i.e. we are not interested in the biological properties, apart from the fact that it can be grown in certain bacteria. Solutions of these viruses can form liquid crystalline phases, are well defined and therefore have been used many times as a model system. By chemical modification of the surface proteins the viruses can be modified, to obtain new properties. An interesting possibility is the modification of the carboxylic groups on the surface of the fd virus by using carbodiimide chemistry to obtain dispersions of charge reversed fd viruses (i.e. positively charged at neutral pH) [1]. As expected, adding dilute solutions of positively charged and negatively charged fd together can result in flocculation. This charge reversal can be combined with a steric stabilization by poly(ethylene glycol) grafting, so that the above mentioned flocculation can be made adjustable and reversible by changing the ionic strength in the solution [1], yielding an interesting model system for the formation of polyelectrolyte complexes (PECs) [2]. Here results on the formation of polyelectrolyte complexes will be presented and the charge of the (modified) viruses is modeled and compared to results from free solution electrophoresis [3].Acknowledgements. We thank M.P. Lettinga and P.R. Lang for useful suggestions[1] Z. Zhang, J. Buitenhuis, A. Cukkemane, M. Brocker, M. Bott and J.K.G. Dhont, Langmuir 2010, 26, 10593.[2] J. van der Gucht, E. Spruijt, M. Lemmers and M.A. Cohen Stuart, J. Colloid Interface Sci. 2011, 361, 407.[3] J. Buitenhuis, Langmuir 2012, 28, 13354. |