Fig. 3.
Reversible protein-like tetramerisation and further higher order association of amino-cellulose AEA-1. Top: monomer unit of degree of polymerization ~ 10, yielding an M ~ 3250 Da and s ~ 0.5 S. Middle: assembly into tetramers with M ~ 13,000 Da and s ~ 1.7 S. Lower: sedimentation coefficient distribution for AEA-1 at different concentrations 2.0 mg/ml (black), 1.0 mg/ml (red) and 0.75 mg/ml (blue). Based on the s ~ M2/3 scaling relationship the super-monomers associate into super-trimers, super-hexamers and super-9-mers with evidence also for some super-dimers, although the latter were not evident at the highest loading concentration. The proportion of the super-monomers drops relative to the higher order species showing partial reversibility even with the higher order association. From Nikolajski et al. (2014) and reproduced with permission of Nature Journals