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Updated: Mar 1, 2026

Assembly and Characterization of Polyelectrolyte Complex Micelles
Published on: March 2, 2020
Co-assembly of Patchy Polymeric Micelles and Protein Molecules
Weijing Fan1, Li Liu1, Hanying Zhao1,2
1Key Laboratory of Functional Polymer Materials, Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071, China.
Abstract:
The development in the synthesis and self-assembly of patchy nanoparticles has resulted in the creation of complex hierarchical structures. Co-assembly of polymeric nanoparticles and protein molecules combines the advantages of polymeric materials and biomolecules, and will produce new functional materials. Co-assembly of positively charged patchy micelles and negatively charged bovine serum albumin (BSA) molecules is investigated. The patchy micelles, which were synthesized using block copolymer brushes as templates, leads to co-assembly with protein molecules into vesicular structures. The average size of the assembled structures can be controlled by the molar ratio of BSA to patchy micelles. The assembled structures are dissociated in the presence of trypsin. The protein-polymer hybrid vesicles could find potential applications in medicine.
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