Microfluidic-assisted polymer-protein assembly to fabricate homogeneous functionalnanoparticles

Libo Zhang; Andrew Beatty; Lin Lu; Akrm Abdalrahman; Thomas M Makris; Guiren Wang; Qian Wang

doi:10.1016/j.msec.2020.110768

Microfluidic-assisted polymer-protein assembly to fabricate homogeneous functionalnanoparticles

Mater Sci Eng C Mater Biol Appl. 2020 Jun:111:110768. doi: 10.1016/j.msec.2020.110768. Epub 2020 Feb 22.

Authors

Libo Zhang¹, Andrew Beatty¹, Lin Lu¹, Akrm Abdalrahman², Thomas M Makris¹, Guiren Wang³, Qian Wang⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of South Carolina, 631 Sumter Street, Columbia, SC 29208, USA.
² Biomedical Engineering Program and Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of South Carolina, 300 Main Street, Columbia, SC 29208, USA.
³ Biomedical Engineering Program and Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of South Carolina, 300 Main Street, Columbia, SC 29208, USA. Electronic address: guirenwang@sc.edu.
⁴ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of South Carolina, 631 Sumter Street, Columbia, SC 29208, USA. Electronic address: wang263@mailbox.sc.edu.

PMID: 32279782
DOI: 10.1016/j.msec.2020.110768

Abstract

Functional polymer-protein nanoparticles (NPs) have broad applications in biotechnology and nanotechnology. In principle, controllable and vigorous mixing is required to fabricate homogeneous NPs, which remains a challenge via conventional bulk synthetic methods. In this study, an electrokinetics (EK) based microfluidic reactor with fast mixing is explored to assemble functional proteins with polymers in an ethanol/water co-solvent system. The resultant NPs show significantly improved size distribution by comparison with the ones prepared using conventional bulk method, while the NPs size can be tuned by adjusting the mass ratio of polymer to protein. The functionalities of the assembled proteins are sustained upon the EK based microfluidic mixing, indicating the application potential of our method in the controlled assembly of different functional proteins.

Keywords: Electrokinetics; Fast mixing; Homogeneous nanoparticle; Microfluidics; Polymer protein co-assembly.

MeSH terms

Electric Conductivity
Green Fluorescent Proteins / chemistry
Microfluidics / methods*
Nanoparticles / chemistry*
Particle Size
Polymers / chemistry*
Proteins / chemistry*
Solvents / chemistry

Substances

Polymers
Proteins
Solvents
enhanced green fluorescent protein
Green Fluorescent Proteins