ISSN:
1662-0356
Source:
Scientific.Net: Materials Science & Technology / Trans Tech Publications Archiv 1984-2008
Topics:
Natural Sciences in General
,
Technology
Notes:
Transport and surface interactions of proteins in nanopore membranes play a key role inmany processes of biomedical importance. Although the use of porous materials provides a largesurface-to-volume ratio, the efficiency of the operations is often determined by transport behavior,and this is complicated by the fact that transport paths (i.e., the pores) are frequently of moleculardimensions. Under these conditions, wall effects become significant, with the mobility of moleculesbeing affected by hydrodynamic interactions between protein molecules and the wall. Modeling oftransport in pores is normally carried out at the continuum level, making use of such parameters ashindrance coefficients; these in turn are typically estimated using continuum methods applied at thelevel of individual diffusing particles. In this work we coupled experimental evidences to manyscalemolecular simulations for the analysis of hen egg-white lysozyme adsorption/diffusionthrough a microfabricated silicon membrane, having pores of nanometric size in only onedimension. Our joint efforts allowed us a) to elucidate the specific mechanisms of interactionbetween the biopolymer and the silicon surface, and b) to derive molecular energetic and structuralparameters to be employed in the formulation of a mathematical model of diffusion, thus filling thegap between the nano- and the macroscale
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://www.tib-hannover.de/fulltexts/2011/0528/01/42/transtech_doi~10.4028%252Fwww.scientific.net%252FAST.53.79.pdf
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