Polyelectrolyte Molecular Weight and Electrostatically-Induced Domains in Lipid Bilayer Membranes
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Polyelectrolyte-induced domain formation in charged lipid bilayer membranes was investigated as a function of polyelectrolyte molecular weight using 2H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Lipid bilayers consisting of mixtures of alpha- or beta-choline-deuterated 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (POPC-alpha-d2 or POPC-beta-d2) plus the cationic amphiphile 1,2-dioleoyl-3-(dimethylamino)propane (DODAP) were exposed to the anionic polyelectrolyte poly(sodium 4-styrenesulfonate) (PSSS) of various molecular weights. Regardless of molecular weight, PSSS produced dual component 2H NMR spectra, indicating two distinct POPC populations, corresponding to PSSS-bound and PSSS-free lipid, in slow exchange with one another. Analysis of the 2H NMR subspectra quadrupolar splittings and intensities showed the PSSS-bound domain to be enriched in DODAP, with the PSSS-free domain correspondingly depleted. At polyelectrolyte loadings below global charge equivalence, PSSS bound DODAP stoichiometrically for all PSSS molecular weights, indicating that the polyelectrolyte chain lies flat upon the membrane surface. At higher PSSS loadings the domains dissipated, leading to single component 2H NMR spectra. At high NaCl concentrations PSSS dissociated from the bilayer surface. Domain size on a per PSSS chain basis increased while the degree of enrichment with DODAP decreased progressively as the PSSS chain length decreased. Such molecular weight-dependent domain characteristics have not been predicted theoretically and need to be taken into account in future refinements of domain models.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".