Design of PG-Surfactants Bearing Polyacrylamide Polymer Chain to Solubilize Membrane Proteins in a Surfactant-Free Buffer.

The development of techniques capable of using membrane proteins in a surfactant-free aqueous buffer is an attractive research area, and it should be elucidated for various membrane protein studies. To this end, we examined a method using new solubilization surfactants that do not detach from membrane protein surfaces once bound. The designed solubilization surfactants, DKDKCK-PA ( = 5, 7, and 18), consist of two parts: one is the lipopeptide-based solubilization surfactant part, DKDKCK, fand the other is the covalently connected linear polyacrylamide (PA) chain with different values of 5, 7, or 18 kDa.