Tuning Ice Nucleation with Supercharged Polypeptides

Huige Yang; Chao Ma; Kaiyong Li; Kai Liu; Mark Loznik; Rosalie Teeuwen; Jan C M van Hest; Xin Zhou; Andreas Herrmann; Jianjun Wang

doi:10.1002/adma.201600496

Tuning Ice Nucleation with Supercharged Polypeptides

Adv Mater. 2016 Jul;28(25):5008-12. doi: 10.1002/adma.201600496. Epub 2016 Apr 27.

Authors

Huige Yang^{1

2}, Chao Ma³, Kaiyong Li⁴, Kai Liu³, Mark Loznik³, Rosalie Teeuwen⁵, Jan C M van Hest⁵, Xin Zhou², Andreas Herrmann³, Jianjun Wang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, P. R. China.
² School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, P. R. China.
³ Department of Polymer Chemistry and Bioengineering, Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 4, 9747AG, Groningen, The Netherlands.
⁴ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Luoyang Institute of Science and Technology, Luoyang, 471023, P. R. China.
⁵ Institute for Molecules and Materials, Radboud University Nijmegen, 6525, AJ, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

PMID: 27119590
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201600496

Abstract

Supercharged unfolded polypeptides (SUPs) are exploited for controlling ice nucleation via tuning the nature of charge and charge density of SUPs. The results show that positively charged SUPs facilitate ice nucleation, while negatively charged ones suppress it. Moreover, the charge density of the SUP backbone is another parameter to control it.

Keywords: electrostatic energy density; ice nucleation; interfacial water; nucleation barrier; supercharged polypeptides.

MeSH terms

Ice
Peptides / chemistry*
Water

Substances

Ice
Peptides
Water