Dispersed and deposited polyelectrolyte complexes and their interactions to chiral compounds and proteins

Polyelectrolyte complexation is a rapidly growing field with applications in functional multilayer (PEM) and nanoparticle (PEC) generation, where PEM films are deposited using Layer-by-Layer technique initiated by Decher and PECs are prepared using mixing-centrifugation technique initiated by our group. Its advantages (e.g. easy preparation) result in various applications in aqueous solution, especially in pharmaceutical and biomedical fields. Therefore, the objectives in this study are to explore interesting applications of polyelectrolyte complexation in the field of low molecular chiral compound and high molecular protein binding. Due to the rapidly growing demands for preparing optically pure compounds in the pharmaceutical field, herein, enantiospecific PEM and PEC were prepared using chiral polyelectrolytes (e.g. homo-polypeptide) and their ability of chiral recognition was investigated by ATR-FTIR, UV/Vis etc.. Chiral PEM and PEC showed pronounced enantiospecificity for both small (amino acids, vitamin) and large (protein) chiral compounds. This chiral recognition is performed by a diffusion process of chiral compounds into PEM based on the structures of chiral selector (PEM, PEC) and chiral probes (chiral compounds). However, the influences, e.g. pH value, ionic strength, surface orientation etc., were found to affect significantly the enantiospecificity. Beside planar substrates, porous membranes (e.g. PTFE) were modified using chiral PEM and successfully applied in enantiospecific permeation. Additionally, protein binding properties of PEC particle dispersions or PEC particle films were also studied. Due to the properties of polyelectrolytes used for PEC (e.g. molecular weight, charge density) and proteins (e.g. isoelectric point, size, hydrophobicity), PEC showed different uptake characteristics towards different proteins. Electrostatic and hydrophobic interaction as well as counterion release force were considered as possible driving forces for protein binding