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Rumyantsev AM, Borisov OV, de Pablo JJ. Structure and Dynamics of Hybrid Colloid-Polyelectrolyte Coacervates. Macromolecules 2023; 56:1713-1730. [PMID: 36874532 PMCID: PMC9979655 DOI: 10.1021/acs.macromol.2c02464] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/06/2022] [Revised: 01/28/2023] [Indexed: 02/16/2023]
Abstract
We develop a scaling theory for the structure and dynamics of "hybrid" complex coacervates formed from linear polyelectrolytes (PEs) and oppositely charged spherical colloids, such as globular proteins, solid nanoparticles, or spherical micelles of ionic surfactants. At low concentrations, in stoichiometric solutions, PEs adsorb at the colloids to form electrically neutral finite-size complexes. These clusters attract each other through bridging between the adsorbed PE layers. Above a threshold concentration, macroscopic phase separation sets in. The coacervate internal structure is defined by (i) the adsorption strength and (ii) the ratio of the resulting shell thickness to the colloid radius, H/R. A scaling diagram of different coacervate regimes is constructed in terms of the colloid charge and its radius for Θ and athermal solvents. For high charges of the colloids, the shell is thick, H ≫ R, and most of the volume of the coacervate is occupied by PEs, which determine its osmotic and rheological properties. The average density of hybrid coacervates exceeds that of their PE-PE counterparts and increases with nanoparticle charge, Q. At the same time, their osmotic moduli remain equal, and the surface tension of hybrid coacervates is lower, which is a consequence of the shell's inhomogeneous density decreasing with the distance from the colloid surface. When charge correlations are weak, hybrid coacervates remain liquid and follow Rouse/reptation dynamics with a Q-dependent viscosity, η Rouse ∼ Q 4/5 and η rep ∼ Q 28/15 for a Θ solvent. For an athermal solvent, these exponents are equal to 0.89 and 2.68, respectively. The diffusion coefficients of colloids are predicted to be strongly decreasing functions of their radius and charge. Our results on how Q affects the threshold coacervation concentration and colloidal dynamics in condensed phases are consistent with experimental observations for in vitro and in vivo studies of coacervation between supercationic green fluorescent proteins (GFPs) and RNA.
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Affiliation(s)
- Artem M Rumyantsev
- Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, United States
| | - Oleg V Borisov
- Institut des Sciences Analytiques et de Physico-Chimie pour l'Environnement et les Matériaux, UMR 5254 CNRS UPPA, Pau 64053, France
| | - Juan J de Pablo
- Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, United States
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Yu B, Liang H, Rumyantsev AM, de Pablo JJ. Isotropic-to-Nematic Transition in Salt-Free Polyelectrolyte Coacervates from Coarse-Grained Simulations. Macromolecules 2022. [DOI: 10.1021/acs.macromol.2c01674] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Boyuan Yu
- Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois60637, United States
| | - Heyi Liang
- Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois60637, United States
| | - Artem M. Rumyantsev
- Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois60637, United States
| | - Juan J. de Pablo
- Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois60637, United States
- Center for Molecular Engineering, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, Illinois60439, United States
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Zhang S, Wang J, Ge T. Force-driven active dynamics of thin nanorods in unentangled polymer melts. SOFT MATTER 2022; 18:6582-6591. [PMID: 35968884 DOI: 10.1039/d2sm00731b] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
Recent advances in the functional material and biomedical applications of nanorods call for a fundamental understanding of the active motion of nanorods in a viscoelastic medium. Molecular dynamics simulations are performed to investigate a model system consisting of force-driven active thin nanorods in a melt of unentangled polymers. The activeness of a thin nanorod arises from a constant external force applied uniformly along the rod. The simulations demonstrate that the active force overcomes the randomness of the diffusive motion and results in a ballistic motion along the direction of the applied force at long timescales. The constant speed of the force-driven ballistic motion is determined by the balance of the active force and the friction from the coupling of the nanorod with the polymer viscosity. The friction coefficient, which is computed as the ratio of the active force and the speed, decreases as the active force increases. The origin of the reduction in the friction coefficient is the high speed that allows the nanorod to renew its local environment faster than the relaxation time of melt chains. A scaling theory is developed to quantify the dependence of the friction coefficient on the strength of the active force. The simulations also demonstrate that the force-driven ballistic motion suppresses the rotational diffusion of the rod and cuts off the de-correlation of the rod axis with time. On the scaling level, the long-time trajectory of a force-driven active nanorod piercing through unentangled polymers may be described as a stretched array of "active blobs", where the short-time random-walk trajectory within an active blob is unperturbed by the active force.
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Affiliation(s)
- Siteng Zhang
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208, USA.
| | - Jiuling Wang
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208, USA.
| | - Ting Ge
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208, USA.
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Zhang P, Wang ZG. Supernatant Phase in Polyelectrolyte Complex Coacervation: Cluster Formation, Binodal, and Nucleation. Macromolecules 2022. [DOI: 10.1021/acs.macromol.2c00340] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Pengfei Zhang
- State Key Laboratory for Modification of Chemical Fibers and Polymer Materials, Center for Advanced Low-Dimension Materials, College of Material Science and Engineering, Donghua University, Shanghai 201620, China
| | - Zhen-Gang Wang
- Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, United States
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Liang H, de Pablo JJ. A Coarse-Grained Molecular Dynamics Study of Strongly Charged Polyelectrolyte Coacervates: Interfacial, Structural, and Dynamical Properties. Macromolecules 2022. [DOI: 10.1021/acs.macromol.2c00246] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Heyi Liang
- Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, United States
| | - Juan J. de Pablo
- Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, United States
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Bos I, Brink E, Michels L, Sprakel J. DNA dynamics in complex coacervate droplets and micelles. SOFT MATTER 2022; 18:2012-2027. [PMID: 35191449 PMCID: PMC8905490 DOI: 10.1039/d1sm01787j] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/20/2021] [Accepted: 02/16/2022] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
Single stranded DNA (ssDNA), or another polyanion, can be mixed with polycations to form liquid-like complex coacervates. When the polycations are replaced by cationic-neutral diblock copolymers, complex coacervate core micelles (C3Ms) can be formed instead. In both complex coacervates and C3Ms, dynamics plays an important role. Yet, to date, the effect of chain length on the dynamics effect is still not fully understood. The DNA complexes provide a versatile platform to further elucidate these chain length effects because the DNA is monodisperse and its length can be easily adapted. Therefore, we study in this paper the dynamics of fluorescently labelled ssDNA in both complex coacervate droplets and micelles. The DNA dynamics in the complex coacervate droplets is probed by fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP). We observe that the DNA diffusion coefficient depends more strongly on the DNA length than predicted by the sticky Rouse model and we show that this can be partly explained by changes in complex coacervate density, but that also other factors might play a role. We measure the molecular exchange of C3Ms by making use of Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) and complement these measurements with Langevin dynamics simulations. We conclude that chain length polydispersity is the main cause of a broad distribution of exchange rates. We hypothesise that the different exchange rates that we observe for the monodisperse DNA are mainly caused by differences in dye interactions and show that the dye can indeed have a large effect on the C3M exchange. In addition, we show that a new description of the C3M molecular exchange is required that accounts among others for the effect of the length of the oppositely charged core species. Together our findings can help to better understand the dynamics in both specific DNA systems and in complex coacervate droplets and micelles in general.
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Affiliation(s)
- Inge Bos
- Physical Chemistry and Soft Matter, Wageningen University & Research, Stippeneng 4, 6708 WE, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
| | - Eline Brink
- Physical Chemistry and Soft Matter, Wageningen University & Research, Stippeneng 4, 6708 WE, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
| | - Lucile Michels
- Physical Chemistry and Soft Matter, Wageningen University & Research, Stippeneng 4, 6708 WE, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
| | - Joris Sprakel
- Physical Chemistry and Soft Matter, Wageningen University & Research, Stippeneng 4, 6708 WE, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
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Sayko R, Tian Y, Liang H, Dobrynin AV. Charged Polymers: From Polyelectrolyte Solutions to Polyelectrolyte Complexes. Macromolecules 2021. [DOI: 10.1021/acs.macromol.1c01171] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Ryan Sayko
- Department of Chemistry, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, United States
| | - Yuan Tian
- Department of Chemistry, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, United States
| | - Heyi Liang
- Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, United States
| | - Andrey V. Dobrynin
- Department of Chemistry, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, United States
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Wang J, O’Connor TC, Grest GS, Zheng Y, Rubinstein M, Ge T. Diffusion of Thin Nanorods in Polymer Melts. Macromolecules 2021; 54:7051-7059. [DOI: 10.1021/acs.macromol.1c00989] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/07/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Jiuling Wang
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208, United States
| | - Thomas C. O’Connor
- Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87185, United States
| | - Gary S. Grest
- Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87185, United States
| | - Yitong Zheng
- Hongyi Honor School, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei 430072, China
- Department of Physics, School of Physics and Technology, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei 430072, China
| | - Michael Rubinstein
- Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Departments of Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, and Physics, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708, United States
| | - Ting Ge
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208, United States
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Rumyantsev AM, Jackson NE, Johner A, de Pablo JJ. Scaling Theory of Neutral Sequence-Specific Polyampholytes. Macromolecules 2021. [DOI: 10.1021/acs.macromol.0c02515] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/29/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Artem M. Rumyantsev
- Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, United States
| | - Nicholas E. Jackson
- Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, United States
- Center for Molecular Engineering, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, Illinois 60439, United States
| | - Albert Johner
- Institut Charles Sadron, Université de Strasbourg, CNRS UPR22, 23 Rue du Loess, Strasbourg, 67034 Cedex 2, France
| | - Juan J. de Pablo
- Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, United States
- Center for Molecular Engineering, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, Illinois 60439, United States
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