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Mechanism for the stabilization of protein clusters above the solubility curve
Mechanism for the stabilization of protein clusters above the solubility curve
- Source :
- Soft matter. 12(1)
- Publication Year :
- 2015
-
Abstract
- Pan, Vekilov and Lubchenko[\textit{J. Phys. Chem. B}, 2010, \textbf{114}, 7620] have proposed that dense stable protein clusters appearing in weak protein solutions above the solubility curve are composed of protein oligomers. The hypothesis is that a weak solution of oligomer species is unstable with respect to condensation causing the formation of dense, oligomer-rich droplets which are stabilized against growth by the monomer-oligomer reaction. Here, we show that such a combination of processes can be understood using a simple capillary model yielding analytic expressions for the cluster properties which can be used to interpret experimental data. We also construct a microscopic Dynamic Density Functional Theory model and show that it is consistent with the predictions of the capillary model. The viability of the mechanism is thus confirmed and it is shown how the radius of the stable clusters is related to physically interesting quantities such as the monomer-oligomer rate constants.
- Subjects :
- Capillary action
FOS: Physical sciences
02 engineering and technology
Condensed Matter - Soft Condensed Matter
01 natural sciences
Oligomer
chemistry.chemical_compound
Reaction rate constant
Physics - Chemical Physics
0103 physical sciences
Cluster (physics)
Physics - Biological Physics
Solubility
010306 general physics
Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph)
Quantitative Biology::Biomolecules
Protein Stability
Weak solution
Condensation
General Chemistry
Radius
021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology
Condensed Matter Physics
chemistry
Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph)
Chemical physics
Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
Physical chemistry
Protein Multimerization
0210 nano-technology
Capillary Action
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 17446848
- Volume :
- 12
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Soft matter
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....0123c2bdc1899413c5354523f6d6f458