Improving protein stabilisation is important for the further development of many applications in the pharmaceutical, specialty chemical, consumer product and agricultural sectors. However, protein stabilization is highly dependent on the solvent environment and, hence, it is very complex to tailor protein-solvent combinations for stable protein maintenance. Understanding solvent features that govern protein stabilization will enable selection or design of suitable media with favourable solution environments to retain protein native conformation. In this work the structural conformation and activity of lysozyme in 29 solvent systems were investigated to determine the role of various solvent features on the stability of the enzyme. The solvent systems consisted of 19 low molecular weight polar solvents and 4 protic ionic liquids (PILs), both at different water content levels, and 6 aqueous salt solutions. Small angle X-ray scattering, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and UV-vis spectroscopy were used to investigate the tertiary and secondary structure of lysozyme along with the corresponding activity in various solvation systems. At low non-aqueous solvent concentrations (high water content), the presence of solvents and salts generally maintained lysozyme in its native structure and enhanced its activity. Due to the presence of a net surface charge on lysozyme, electrostatic interactions in PIL-water systems and salt solutions enhanced lysozyme activity more than the specific hydrogen-bond interactions present in non-ionic molecular solvents. At higher solvent concentrations (lower water content), solvents with a propensity to exhibit the solvophobic effect, analogous to the hydrophobic effect in water, retained lysozyme native conformation and activity. This solvophobic effect was observed particularly for solvents which contained hydroxyl moieties. Preferential solvophobic effects along with bulky chemical structures were postulated to result in less competition with water at the specific hydration layer around the protein, thus reducing protein-solvent interactions and retaining lysozyme's native conformation. The structure-property links established in this study are considered to be applicable to other proteins.

Sixteen non-ionic molecular solvents have been found to exhibit the solvophobic effect and to support the formation of amphiphile self-assembly mesophases. The solvents were low molecular weight polar solvents which contained various combinations of amine, hydroxyl or ether moieties with relatively small proportions of hydrocarbon unit constituents. The studied amphiphiles were hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB), hexadecylpyridinium bromide (C16PyrBr) and tetraethylene glycol monohexadecyl ether (C16E4). Lyotropic liquid crystal mesophases with lamellar, normal hexagonal and normal bicontinuous cubic, with ordered one-, two- and three-dimensional periodic structure respectively, were identified in CTAB and C16PyrBr systems by using cross-polarised optical microscopy (CPOM). Mesophase diversity and thermal stability ranges correlated to the Gordon parameter (G) value, a proxy for the solvent cohesive energy density. Infrared spectroscopy confirmed that all the studied molecular solvents were associative liquids. Solvent mesostructure was studied by synchrotron small angle X-ray scattering. The small sub-set of neat solvents which were mesostructured, with polar and non-polar domain segregation, displayed the lowest G values, and amongst the lowest mesophase diversity and thermal stability ranges. It has been established that the G value is a good indicator of whether or not a molecular solvent is likely to behave as a co-surfactant, residing within the amphiphile-solvent interfacial region of self-assembled objects, thereby influencing specific mesophase structure formation. Structure-property behaviour has been explored and shows that beneficial solvent features for serving as amphiphile-self assembly media, with the potential for rich mesophase diversity, include the presence of hydroxyl > amine > ether moieties, while methyl moieties have an adverse effect larger than that of methylene moieties.