Gibson Group News

Collaborative work with the O'Reilly group has been published online. This is part of our ongoing work to develop 'smart' materials which have triggerable interactions with biological systems. Read the paper here.

Matt Jones' work on the development of dibromomaleimide end-functional polymers for insertion into native protein disulfides is available now. link

Work from the group has been accepted for publication in the leading macromolecular journal - Polymer Chemistry (RSC). In this paper we investigate the effect of blending different molecular weight polymers which display lower critical solution temperature (LCST) behaviour. We found that polymers which have a strong relationship between their observed cloud points and Mw underwent a single cooperative transition when blended at a all ratios, exemplified with several polymer classes. However, POEGMA, which do not show a storng Mw dependance, instead showed tow distinct transitions, one for each component. These findings will help us to develop new triggerable macromolecules for slective interaction with cells/membranes. This would was the result of collaboration with Rachel O'Reilly's group.

Following two recent publications from the group, (here and here) in the journal Chemical Communications, Matt was interviewed to discuss the groups research and future plans. Read the full text here.

Work undertaken by Mat Jones has been accepted to be published in JACS. This work descirbes the use of dibromomaleimides to directly insert polymers into disulfide bridges in proteins whilst maintaining protein structure/function.

Disulfide linkages were introduced into poly (N-isopropylacrylamide) by the polycondensation of a RAFT-derived, telechelic macromonomer to give degradable yet vinyl-based polymers. These polymers displayed a redox-sensitive lower critical solution temperature (LCST) with the shorter, degraded product displaying a higher LCST than its non-degraded counterpart.

link

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Recent work undertaken by Dan Phillips in the group has been accepted for publication in Chemical Communications. In this paper, we describe the synthesis of RAFT-dervied polymers which contain biodegradable disulfide (-S-S-) linkages. Upon increasing the reduction potential of the solution (such as is found inside cells), the polymer degrades. Additionally, as thermoresponsive units were incorporated the polymer can undergo a hydrophillic-hydrophobic switch upon heating, which is subsequently 'turned off' by addition of a reducing agent.