Figure 4.

Interaction of linear synthetic polyelectrolytes with proteins. a) The binding constant of poly(acrylic acid) to human serum albumin (HSA) is plotted against the log of the salt concentration. At high salt concentrations, there is a linear relationship, the slope of which gives the number of released counterions according to Equation (3). Deviations at low salt concentrations point to a residual Debye–Hückel repulsion between the protein and the polyelectrolyte. b) MD simulation of the interaction of the interaction of HSA with poly(acrylic acid). The polyelectrolyte is bound to the Sudlow II site of HSA. ^[50]