Covalent incorporation of tobacco mosaic virus increases the stiffness of poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate hydrogels.

ABSTRACT: Hydrogels are versatile materials, finding applications as adsorbers, supports for biosensors and biocatalysts or as scaffolds for tissue engineering. A frequently used building block for chemically cross-linked hydrogels is poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEG-DA). However, after curing, PEG-DA hydrogels cannot be functionalized easily. In this contribution, the stiff, rod-like tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) is investigated as a functional additive to PEG-DA hydrogels. TMV consists of more than 2000 identical coat proteins and can therefore present more than 2000 functional sites per TMV available for coupling, and thus has been used as a template or building block for nano-scaled hybrid materials for many years. Here, PEG-DA (M _n = 700 g mol^-1) hydrogels are com

SUBMITTER: Southan A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9077753 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature