Fischell Department of Bioengineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
Soft Matter. 2019 Dec 4;15(47):9632-9639. doi: 10.1039/c9sm01715a.
We report the design of a mucin hydrogel created using a thiol-based cross-linking strategy. By using a cross-linking reagent capable of forming hydrogen bonds and disulfide linkages within the gel network, we were able to produce mucin-based hydrogels with viscoelastic properties similar to natural mucus as measured by bulk rheology. We confirmed disulfide cross-links strongly contribute to gel formation in our system using chemical treatments to block and reduce cysteines where we found mucin hydrogel network formation was inhibited and disrupted, respectively. Particle tracking microrheology was used to investigate the kinetics and evolution of microstructure and viscoelasticity within the hydrogel as it formed. We found that the rate of gel formation could be tuned by varying the mucin to crosslinker ratio, producing network pore sizes in the range measured previously in human mucus. The results of this work provide a new, simple method for creating mucin hydrogels with physiologically relevant properties using readily available reagents.
我们报告了一种使用基于巯基的交联策略设计的粘蛋白水凝胶。通过使用一种交联试剂，该试剂能够在凝胶网络内形成氢键和二硫键，我们能够生产出具有类似于天然粘液的粘弹性的基于粘蛋白的水凝胶，这可以通过体积流变学来测量。我们通过化学处理来阻断和减少半胱氨酸，确认二硫键在我们的系统中强烈有助于凝胶形成，在那里我们发现粘蛋白水凝胶网络的形成分别受到抑制和破坏。使用粒子跟踪微流变学来研究水凝胶形成过程中的动力学和微观结构及粘弹性的演变。我们发现，通过改变粘蛋白与交联剂的比例，可以调节凝胶形成的速度，从而产生在先前在人粘液中测量到的范围内的网络孔径。这项工作的结果提供了一种新的、简单的方法，使用现成的试剂来创建具有生理相关性质的粘蛋白水凝胶。
