Superselective adsorption of multivalent polymeric particles

TL;DR

This paper develops an analytical theory to understand how multivalent polymeric particles achieve superselective binding, considering polymer flexibility and ligand composition, with implications for biological and material applications.

Contribution

It introduces a new analytical framework for calculating avidity and selectivity of multivalent polymers, explicitly incorporating conformational degrees of freedom.

Findings

Superselectivity is unaffected by ligand sequence in Gaussian chains with short linkers.

Polymer flexibility influences binding avidity and selectivity.

The theory provides insights into designing selective multivalent systems.

Abstract

Multivalency is a common biological mechanism of formation of strong reversible and selective bonds by grouping weak bonds. Polymers often act as a scaffold to which multiple binding groups are attached. Here I present an analytical theory allowing to calculate avidity and selectivity for multivalent polymeric particles using tools from the theory of associating fluids. I explicitly take into account conformational degrees of freedom of a polymeric scaffold and discuss how they affect superselectivity. I also consider linear polymeric particles with two types of ligands and show that superselectivity does not depend on the sequence of ligands along the backbone for a Gaussian chain with short linkers.