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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2008 Aug 1.
Published in final edited form as: Prog Polym Sci. 2007 Aug;32(8-9):1083–1122. doi: 10.1016/j.progpolymsci.2007.05.018

Figure 8.

Figure 8

Schematic of molecular gating using an LCST polymer. The polymer switches from its hydrated, random coil state to its collapsed state on increasing the temperature above LCST and blocks ligand binding to the substrate. This specific example describes the blocking of the interaction between a mutant streptavidin–poly(NIPAM) conjugate and biotin (ligand molecule), induced by the phase transition of poly(NIPAM). For poly(NIPAM), this phase transition induced molecular gating occurs around 37 °C (Modified from Reference [179]).