Lee Hwankyu
Department of Chemical Engineering, Dankook University, Yongin-si, 16890, South Korea.
Small. 2024 Dec;20(51):e2403913. doi: 10.1002/smll.202403913. Epub 2024 Jul 31.
Multiple 10 nm-sized anionic nanoparticles complexed with plasma proteins (human serum albumin (SA) or immunoglobulin gamma-1 (IgG)) at different ratios are simulated using all-atom and coarse-grained models. Coarse-grained simulations show much larger hydrodynamic radii of individual particles at a low protein concentration (a protein-to-particle ratio of 1) than at high protein concentrations or without proteins, indicating particle aggregation only at such a low protein concentration, in agreement with experiments. This particle aggregation is attributed to both electrostatic and hydrophobic particle-protein interactions, to an extent dependent on different proteins. In all-atom simulations, IgG proteins induce particle aggregation with and without salt, while SA proteins promote particle aggregation only in the presence of salt that can weaken the electrostatic repulsion between anionic particles closely linked via SA that is smaller than IgG, which also agree well with experiments. Besides charge interactions, hydrophobic interactions between particles and proteins are also important especially at the high salt concentration, leading to the increased particle-protein contact area. These findings help explain experimental observations regarding that the effects of protein concentration and ionic strength on particle aggregation depend on different plasma proteins, which are interpreted by binding free energies, electrostatic, and hydrophobic interactions between particles and proteins.
使用全原子模型和粗粒度模型模拟了多种与血浆蛋白(人血清白蛋白(SA)或免疫球蛋白γ-1(IgG))以不同比例复合的10纳米大小的阴离子纳米颗粒。粗粒度模拟显示,在低蛋白浓度(蛋白与颗粒的比例为1)下,单个颗粒的流体动力学半径比高蛋白浓度或无蛋白时大得多,这表明仅在这种低蛋白浓度下颗粒会发生聚集,与实验结果一致。这种颗粒聚集归因于静电和疏水的颗粒-蛋白相互作用,其程度取决于不同的蛋白质。在全原子模拟中,IgG蛋白在有盐和无盐的情况下都会诱导颗粒聚集,而SA蛋白仅在存在能削弱通过SA紧密相连的阴离子颗粒之间静电排斥的盐时才会促进颗粒聚集,SA比IgG小,这也与实验结果非常吻合。除了电荷相互作用外,颗粒与蛋白质之间的疏水相互作用也很重要,尤其是在高盐浓度下,会导致颗粒-蛋白接触面积增加。这些发现有助于解释关于蛋白浓度和离子强度对颗粒聚集的影响取决于不同血浆蛋白的实验观察结果,这些结果通过颗粒与蛋白质之间的结合自由能、静电和疏水相互作用来解释。