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Soft Materials Research Lab
The Sharma Group
Protein-PS Bioconjugates Dispersion in Ionic Liquids
Dispersing and stabilising proteins in ionic liquids (ILs) provides significant opportunities for green solvent-based biocatalysis, especially in industrial processes at elevated temperatures. Using a combination of different physio-chemical experimental tools and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, we investigate the dispersion and driving force for the stabilisation of Protein-Polymer Surfactant bioconjugates in neat ILs.The study shows that electrostatic interaction between the adsorbed PS on the protein is responsible for dispersing the conjugates in aprotic IL (AIL) with an interesting phenomenon of charge inversion on the conjugate surface. Also, the conjugates were found to electrostatically stabilise themselves due to the manifestation of a depletion region while approaching each other in the dispersion which induced an electrostatic repulsion on the conjugates. However, protic ILs found incompetent in dispersing the PS-cPR conjugates due to excessive screening of electrostatic potential by the ionic constituents.
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