Assessment of core-shell nanoparticles surface structure heterogeneity by SAXS contrast variation and ab initio modeling
A group of scientists from the Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics and the Laboratory of Carbohydrates of the IBCH RAS, the A.V. Shubnikov Institute of Crystallography, and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (Hamburg) developed a new approach to study the structure of nanoparticles by combining SAXS and molecular dynamics. In their paper, published in Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces, they characterized the surface structure of core-shell nanoparticles formed by biotin-CMG2-DOPE amphiphil using SAXS contrast variation and low-resolution Ab initio structure restoration. This approach demonstrates heterogeneity of the nanoparticles surface through a non-uniform distribution of the polar CMG2 spacer around the nonpolar core, localized in the form of patches. The data were verified by comparing with all-atom nanoparticle structure obtained from molecular dynamics simulation, indicating the efficacy of SAXS contrast variation to assess surface structure heterogeneity of multi-phase nanoparticles. Learn more
february 24, 2023