We report that a variety of ternary particle/liquid/liquid mixtures heavily aggregate or separate completely if (1) the particles are fully or almost fully wetted by one fluid, and (2) if the wetting fluid volume fraction is comparable to the particle volume fraction. Aggregation and separation do not happen if the particles are partially wetted by both fluids, in which case Pickering emulsions appear at all compositions. Rheological and geometric criteria for aggregation are proposed and compared with a state diagram of a ternary system composed of oil, water, and hydrophilic glass particles. Analogies are drawn to wet granulation and spherical agglomeration, two particle processing operations in which wetting phenomena are important.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/la4039396 | DOI Listing |
J Phys Chem Lett
January 2025
Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zurich, Vladimir Prelog Weg 2, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland.
Relaxation-induced dipolar modulation enhancement (RIDME) is a pulse EPR experiment originally designed to determine distances between spin labels. However, RIDME has several features that make it an efficient tool in a number of "nonconventional" applications, away from the original purpose of this pulse experiment. RIDME appears to be an interesting experiment to probe longitudinal electron spin dynamics, e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProtein Sci
February 2025
Department of Cell Biology and Genetics, Texas A&M Health Science Center, Texas A&M University, Bryan, Texas, USA.
The Drosophila intrinsically disordered protein Ultrabithorax (Ubx) undergoes a series of phase transitions, beginning with noncovalent interactions between apparently randomly organized monomers, and evolving over time to form increasingly ordered coacervates. This assembly process ends when specific dityrosine covalent bonds lock the monomers in place, forming macroscale materials. Inspired by this hierarchical, multistep assembly process, we analyzed the impact of protein concentration, assembly time, and subphase composition on the early, noncovalent stages of Ubx assembly, which are extremely sensitive to their environment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRev Physiol Biochem Pharmacol
January 2025
Institute of Medical Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK.
Several neurological diseases arise from abnormal protein aggregation within neurones and this is closely regulated by phase separation. One such is motor neurone disease and aberrant aggregation of superoxide dismutase. Again these events are regulated by electrical forces that are examined.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Mater Chem B
January 2025
Shanghai Key Laboratory of Advanced Polymeric Materials, Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, 200237, China.
Inspired from heat shock proteins (HSPs), a thermo-sensitive coacervate-forming polycaprolactone (CPCL) was designed as a natural chaperone mimic to protect proteins from thermal stress. Unlike the coil-globule polymers of poly(-isopropyl acrylamide) (PNIPAM), the as-designed CPCL underwent a partial dehydration during heating, characterizing it as a coacervate-forming polymer. With its ability to transform between the coil and coacervate states in response to temperature, theCPCL spontaneously captured and released targeted proteins, thereby behaving like a natural chaperone of HSPs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Control Release
January 2025
State Key Laboratory of Natural Medicines, China Pharmaceutical University, 639 Longmian Avenue, Nanjing 211198, China; NMPA Key Laboratory for Research and Evaluation of Pharmaceutical Preparations and Excipients, China Pharmaceutical University, 24 Tong Jia Xiang, Nanjing 210009, China; Department of Pharmaceutics, School of Pharmacy, 639 Longmian Avenue, Nanjing 211198, China. Electronic address:
Active-targeting nanomedicines have been widely employed in cancer treatment for increasing therapeutic index. However, the limited permeability caused by the binding site barrier (BSB) and size hindrances compromises their clinical antitumor efficacy in patients. Herein, learning from the liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) of bio-macromolecules, we report phase-separating glycopeptides (HEP) from polyhistidine (PHis) grafted hyaluronic acid (HA), which can sense the tumor extracellular pH and concomitantly overcome size and BSB dilemmas for enhanced tumor penetration.
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