Southan A, Lang T, Schweikert M, Tovar G E M, Wege C, Eiben S
Institute of Interfacial Process Engineering and Plasma Technology IGVP, University of Stuttgart Nobelstr. 12 70569 Stuttgart Germany
Department of Biobased Materials, Institute of Biomaterials and Biomolecular Systems, University of Stuttgart Pfaffenwaldring 57 70569 Stuttgart Germany.
RSC Adv. 2018 Jan 25;8(9):4686-4694. doi: 10.1039/c7ra10364f. eCollection 2018 Jan 24.
Hydrogels are versatile materials, finding applications as adsorbers, supports for biosensors and biocatalysts or as scaffolds for tissue engineering. A frequently used building block for chemically cross-linked hydrogels is poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEG-DA). However, after curing, PEG-DA hydrogels cannot be functionalized easily. In this contribution, the stiff, rod-like tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) is investigated as a functional additive to PEG-DA hydrogels. TMV consists of more than 2000 identical coat proteins and can therefore present more than 2000 functional sites per TMV available for coupling, and thus has been used as a template or building block for nano-scaled hybrid materials for many years. Here, PEG-DA ( = 700 g mol) hydrogels are combined with a thiol-group presenting TMV mutant (TMV). By covalent coupling of TMV into the hydrogel matrix the thiol-Michael reaction, the storage modulus of the hydrogels is increased compared to pure PEG-DA hydrogels and to hydrogels containing wildtype TMV (wt-TMV) which is not coupled covalently into the hydrogel matrix. In contrast, the swelling behaviour of the hydrogels is not altered by TMV or wt-TMV. Transmission electron microscopy reveals that the TMV particles are well dispersed in the hydrogels without any large aggregates. These findings give rise to the conclusion that well-defined hydrogels were obtained which offer the possibility to use the incorporated TMV as multivalent carrier templates for enzymes in future studies.
水凝胶是用途广泛的材料，可用作吸附剂、生物传感器和生物催化剂的载体或组织工程支架。化学交联水凝胶常用的构建单元是聚乙二醇二丙烯酸酯（PEG-DA）。然而，固化后，PEG-DA水凝胶不易功能化。在本研究中，研究了刚性棒状烟草花叶病毒（TMV）作为PEG-DA水凝胶的功能添加剂。TMV由2000多个相同的衣壳蛋白组成，因此每个TMV可提供2000多个可用于偶联的功能位点，多年来一直被用作纳米级杂化材料的模板或构建单元。在此，将PEG-DA（ = 700 g/mol）水凝胶与带有巯基的TMV突变体（TMV）结合。通过TMV与水凝胶基质的共价偶联（硫醇-迈克尔反应），与纯PEG-DA水凝胶以及含有未共价偶联到水凝胶基质中的野生型TMV（wt-TMV）的水凝胶相比，水凝胶的储能模量增加。相比之下，TMV或wt-TMV不会改变水凝胶的溶胀行为。透射电子显微镜显示TMV颗粒在水凝胶中分散良好，没有任何大的聚集体。这些发现得出的结论是，获得了明确的水凝胶，这为在未来的研究中使用掺入的TMV作为酶的多价载体模板提供了可能性。
