Solubilization of phosphatidylcholine vesicles by hydrophobically modified poly(acrylamide)-co-(acrylic acid): effects of acrylic acid fraction and polymer concentration

The interaction of hydrophobically modified copolymers of acrylamide and acrylic acid, designated as PAM-C12-AA (X%) (X% indicates the percentage of acrylic acid unit and X = 5, 10, 20), with dimyristoylphosphatidylcholine (DMPC) vesicles has been studied. Complementary techniques including isothermal titration microcalorimetry (ITC), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), turbidity measurement, calcein leakage measurement, dynamic light scattering (DLS), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were used to get comprehensive information. The results show that PAM-C12-AA leads to solubilization of DMPC vesicles. There is a critical concentration (C(s)) for PAM-C12-AA to induce obvious vesicle disruption. This concentration is very close to the critical aggregation concentration (CAC) for the polymer self-aggregation. The Cs values are found to be similar for the three polymers. However, the disruption of DMPC vesicles induced by the polymers increases to a greater degree at higher AA fraction, owing to the increasing strength of interaction between the polymer and the lipid bilayer.