CHICAGO, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Enzymes prefer to join certain polymer sequences over others, a study of Northwestern University (NU) shows.
Performing computer simulations, the researchers examined the key factors that determined the coverage of the random copolymers with different types of enzymes in a given solvent; how the enzymes selected the random copolymers to protect themselves from unfavorable solvents; and the relationship between the enzyme surface characteristics and the polymer features.
"We found that the enzymes indeed select certain polymer sequences that best cover their surface out of the pool of the polymers," said senior research associate Trung Dac Nguyen at NU's McCormick's Department of Materials Science and Engineering. "The random copolymers provide the composition and sequence diversity similar to that in disordered enzymes, which explains why they can efficiently cover numerous enzymes in different size, shape, and surface patterns."
The study highlights that this special family of copolymers is an excellent candidate material for synthesizing membraneless organelles - the micron-sized liquid droplets inside cells of living organisms, as well as for stabilizing and delivering enzymes across multiple non-biological media.
"Our discovery provides guidelines to make the dispersion of enzymes much more cost-effective and efficient," said Olvera de la Cruz said, professor of materials science and engineering at NU's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.
In the next step, NU researchers plan to investigate how the membraneless organelles might spontaneously form with these copolymers-enzymes, how to control their sizes, and how the structural properties of the enzymes might be affected inside the organelles.
The study was published June 11 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
