Issue 9, 2014

Aqueous photoinduced living/controlled polymerization: tailoring for bioconjugation

Abstract

We report a photoinduced living polymerization technique able to polymerize a large range of monomers, including methacrylates, acrylates and acrylamides, in water and biological media as well as organic solvents. This polymerization technique employs ultra-low concentrations of a ruthenium-based photoredox catalyst (typically 1 ppm to monomers) and enables low energy visible LED light to afford well-defined polymers with narrow polydispersities (Mw/Mn < 1.3). In this paper, different parameters, including photocatalyst concentrations and solvent effects, were thoroughly investigated. In addition, successful polymerizations in biological media have been reported with good control of the molecular weights and molecular weight distributions (Mw/Mn < 1.4). Finally, protein–polymer bioconjugates using a “grafting from” approach were demonstrated using bovine serum albumin as a model biomacromolecule. The enzymatic bioactivity of the protein was demonstrated to be maintained using a standard assay.

Graphical abstract: Aqueous photoinduced living/controlled polymerization: tailoring for bioconjugation

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
06 May 2014
Accepted
21 May 2014
First published
30 Jun 2014

Chem. Sci., 2014,5, 3568-3575

Aqueous photoinduced living/controlled polymerization: tailoring for bioconjugation

J. Xu, K. Jung, N. A. Corrigan and C. Boyer, Chem. Sci., 2014, 5, 3568 DOI: 10.1039/C4SC01309C

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