Multivalent ion effects on electrostatic stability of virus-like nano-shells

Javidpour, Leili; Božič, Anže; Naji, Ali; Podgornik, Rudolf

doi:10.1063/1.4825099

Cited by 23 publications

(40 citation statements)

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“…In these situations, one deals with a difficult problem in which neither the WC nor the SC limiting laws can be applied without reservations. For such asymmetric Coulomb fluids, a generalized dressed multivalent-ion approach, that bridges the two limits in one single theoretical framework, has been introduced [7,34] and tested against extensive explicit-and implicition simulations [7,[34][35][36][37][38].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strong coupling electrostatics for randomly charged surfaces: antifragility and effective interactions

et al. 2015

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We study the effective interaction mediated by strongly coupled Coulomb fluids between dielectric surfaces carrying quenched, random monopolar charges with equal mean and variance, both when the Coulomb fluid consists only of mobile multivalent counterions and when it consists of an asymmetric ionic mixture containing multivalent and monovalent (salt) ions in equilibrium with an aqueous bulk reservoir. We analyze the consequences that follow from the interplay between surface charge disorder, dielectric and salt image effects, and the strong electrostatic coupling that results from multivalent counterions on the distribution of these ions and the effective interaction pressure they mediate between the surfaces. In a dielectrically homogeneous system, we show that the multivalent counterions are attracted towards the surfaces with a singular, disorder-induced potential that diverges logarithmically on approach to the surfaces, creating a singular but integrable counterion density profile that exhibits an algebraic divergence at the surfaces with an exponent that depends on the surface charge (disorder) variance. This effect drives the system towards a state of lower thermal 'disorder', one that can be described by a renormalized temperature, exhibiting thus a remarkable antifragility. In the presence of an interfacial dielectric discontinuity, the singular behavior of counterion density at the surfaces is removed but multivalent counterions are still accumulated much more strongly close to randomly charged surfaces as compared with uniformly charged ones. The interaction pressure acting on the surfaces displays in general a highly non-monotonic behavior as a function of the inter-surface separation with a prominent regime of attraction at small to intermediate separations. This attraction is caused directly by the combined effects from charge disorder and strong coupling electrostatics of multivalent counterions, which dominate the surface-surface repulsion due to the (equal) mean charges on the two surfaces and the osmotic pressure of monovalent ions residing between them. These effects can be quite significant even with a small degree of surface charge disorder relative to the mean surface charge. The strong coupling, disorder-induced attraction is typically much stronger than the van der Waals interaction between the surfaces, especially within a range of several nanometers for the inter-surface separation, where such effects are predicted to be most pronounced.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strong coupling electrostatics for randomly charged surfaces: antifragility and effective interactions

et al. 2015

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“…Siber and Podgornik showed that the filled ssRNA virions exhibit a small residual negative osmotic pressure, which depends strongly on the amount of capsid charges and can be turned positive with relatively higher capsid charge [28]. In addition, Javidpour et al studied the effects of multivalent ions, which can fundamentally change the nature of electrostatic interactions [38], on the osmotic pressure and the stability of the virus like empty shells, showing that the multivalent ions can turn a positive electrostatic osmotic pressure into a negative one [36]. Furthermore, recent all atom molecular dynamics simulations showed that the osmotic pressure inside an empty Poliovirus capsid is negative, suggesting that the mechanism might be connected with excess charges on the capsid that prevent the solution ion to exchange with the capsid [37], a scenario at odds with what we know about the permeability of capsids.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There have been several theoretical studies that investigate the osmotic pressure of ssRNA viruses [28,31,[35][36][37]. Siber and Podgornik showed that the filled ssRNA virions exhibit a small residual negative osmotic pressure, which depends strongly on the amount of capsid charges and can be turned positive with relatively higher capsid charge [28].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of RNA branching on the electrostatic stabilization of viruses

et al. 2016

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Many single-stranded (ss) RNA viruses self assemble from capsid protein subunits and the nucleic acid to form an infectious virion. It is believed that the electrostatic interactions between the negatively charged RNA and the positively charged viral capsid proteins drive the encapsidation, although there is growing evidence that the sequence of the viral RNA also plays a role in packaging. In particular the sequence will determine the possible secondary structures that the ssRNA will take in solution. In this work, we use a mean field theory to investigate how the secondary structure of the RNA combined with electrostatic interactions affects the efficiency of assembly and stability of the assembled virions. We show that the secondary structure of RNA may result in negative osmotic pressures while a linear polymer causes positive osmotic pressures for the same conditions. This may suggest that the branched structure makes the RNA more effectively packaged and the virion more stable.

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“…[7, 81, 99-104, 106-108, 112-119] and references therein), or more generally, the dressed multivalent-ion theory [27,103,120,121], which provides a very good approximation for the study of asymmetric Coulomb fluids over a wide range of parameters as verified by explicit-ion and implicit-ion simulations. The dressed multivalent-ion theory reproduces the mean-field Debye-Hückel theory and the standard strong-coupling theory for counterion-only systems [99-103, 106-108, 112-118] as two limiting theories in the regime of large and small Debye screening lengths and, therefore, bridges the gap between these two limits [27,103,[120][121][122][123]. The key step in this latter approach is to integrate out the degrees of freedom associated with monovalent ions by means of a linearization approximation, justified only for highly asymmetric Coulomb fluids q ≫ 1, and yielding an effective Debye-Hückel (DH) interaction between the remaining multivalent ions and the surface charges (if any) [120].…”

Section: A Formal Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 78%

Ion-mediated interactions between net-neutral slabs: Weak and strong disorder effects

Ghodrat

Naji

Komaie-Moghaddam

et al. 2015

The Journal of Chemical Physics

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We investigate the effective interaction between two randomly charged but otherwise net-neutral, planar dielectric slabs immersed in an asymmetric Coulomb fluid containing a mixture of mobile monovalent and multivalent ions. The presence of charge disorder on the apposed bounding surfaces of the slabs leads to substantial qualitative changes in the way they interact, as compared with the standard picture provided by the van der Waals and image-induced, ion-depletion interactions. While, the latter predict purely attractive interactions between strictly neutral slabs, we show that the combined effects from surface charge disorder, image depletion, Debye (or salt) screening, and also, in particular, their coupling with multivalent ions, give rise to a more diverse behavior for the effective interaction between net-neutral slabs at nano-scale separations. Disorder effects show large variation depending on the properly quantified strength of disorder, leading either to non-monotonic effective interaction with both repulsive and attractive branches when the surface charges are weakly disordered (small disorder variance) or to a dominating attractive interaction that is larger both in its range and magnitude than what is predicted from the van der Waals and image-induced, ion-depletion interactions, when the surfaces are strongly disordered (large disorder variance).

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Multivalent ion effects on electrostatic stability of virus-like nano-shells

Cited by 23 publications

References 50 publications

Strong coupling electrostatics for randomly charged surfaces: antifragility and effective interactions

Strong coupling electrostatics for randomly charged surfaces: antifragility and effective interactions

Effects of RNA branching on the electrostatic stabilization of viruses

Ion-mediated interactions between net-neutral slabs: Weak and strong disorder effects

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