EVENT DETAILS AND ABSTRACT

Title: Kinetics of protein adsorption: multi-scale approach for bridging time scales
Speaker: Igal Szleifer
Speaker Info: Purdue University
Brief Description:
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Abstract:

Protein adsorption plays a key role in a variety of biological processes. Control of protein adsorption is of primary importance in the design of biocompatible materials and drug carriers. In this talk we will describe a molecular approach that allows for the systematic study of the kinetics and thermodynamics of the adsorption process. The understanding of the molecular parameters that determine protein adsorption enable the design of surface modifiers that control the adsorption process. The adsorption of proteins is determined by interactions that are much larger than the thermal energy. The time scale for adsorption and desorption can be of the order of minutes to hours. Thus, it is a challenging fundamental problem to study at the molecular level. We will show how to build a multi-scale molecular approach that enables the study of the adsorption/desorption process bridging the gap in time scales from nanoseconds to hours keeping at all approximation levels molecular details of the protein-polymer mixture. We will use the adsorption of proteins on surfaces with grafted polymer as a model system to apply the hierarchy of theoretical approaches. The effect of polymer molecular weight, surface coverage and chemical architecture on the adsorption of the proteins will be discussed in detail. We will show the ability of the polymers to trap the proteins once they are adsorbed resulting in irreversible adsorption due to the very long time scales of desorption. The presentation will end with a discussion of the type of systems where our theory can be applied and the limitations and possible generalization of the multi-scale approach.