The concept of a fractional base unit for the Kendrick mass defect (KMD) analysis of polymer ions is introduced for the first time. A fraction of the ethylene oxide (EO) repeat unit (namely EO/8) has been used for the KMD analysis of a poly(ethylene oxide) and found to amplify the variations of KMD between monoisotopic and 13C isotopes, producing an isotopically resolved KMD plot at full scale ...

A comparative investigation of the aggregation in aqueous solution of a poly(ethylene oxide)-poly(propylene oxide)poly(ethylene oxide) block copolymer (PEO-PPO-PPO) (Pluronic F127) with a polydimethylsiloxane-graft-polyether (PDMS-PEO) has been done. The spectroscopic parameters obtained from absorption spectra of the 4,4,5,5tetramethylimidazoline-1-oxyl-3-oxide-2-undecyl (TEMIDO-undecyl) and f...

Previous studies have examined different strategies for siRNA delivery with varying degrees of success. These include use of viral vectors, cationic liposomes, and polymers. Several copolymers were designed and synthesized based on blocks of poly(ethylene glycol) PEG, poly(propylene glycol) PPG, and poly(l-lysine). These were designated as P1, P2, and P3. We studied the copolymer self-assembly,...

Temperature-sensitive hyaluronic acid (HA) hydrogels were synthesized by photopolymerization of vinyl group modified HA in combination with acrylate group end-capped poly(ethylene glycol)-poly(propylene glycol)-poly(ethylene glycol) tri-block copolymer (Pluronic F127). The synthesized HA/Pluronic composite hydrogels gradually collapsed with increasing temperature over the range of 5-40 degrees ...

The relationship between molecular architecture and the nature of interactions with lipid bilayers has been studied for a series of poly(ethylene oxide)-b-poly(propylene oxide)-b-poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO-PPO-PEO) triblock copolymers using small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and thermal analysis (differential scanning calorimetry, DSC). The number of molecular repeat units in the hydrophobic po...

The behavior of poly(propylene imine) (PPI) dendrimers in concentrated solutions has been investigated using molecular dynamics simulations containing up to a thousand PPI dendrimers of generation 4 or 5 in explicit water. To deal with large system sizes and time scales required to study the solutions over a wide range of dendrimer concentrations, a previously published coarse-grained model was...