Attractive interactions between negatively charged bovine serum
albumin (BSA) at pH 7 and 9 and poly(sodium acrylate) were obtained by substituting a small fraction of
acrylic units with alkylacrylamide units.
Using light scattering, equilibrium dialysis, and viscometry, we
investigated, in dilute solution, the association
between BSA and two sets of modified polyacrylates of mean molecular
weight 5000 and 150 000, respectively.
The formation of complexes was revealed by pronounced increases of
the scattering depending on the
hydrophobicity of the synthetic polymer. It was not observed with
entirely hydrophilic polyacrylates under
the same conditions. In the case of long polyacrylates, the
apparent hydrodynamic radius of the complexes
was slightly larger than that of the free polymer. The
polydispersity in size of the complexes seemed low.
In the case of short polyacrylates, the complexation can be
depicted as the “adsorption” of several polymer
chains per protein. In contrast, complexes with long polyacrylates
contain a single chain that accommodates
several proteins.
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