The particle in the spider's web: transport through biological hydrogels
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Author(s)
Witten, Jacob
Ribbeck, Katharina
Witten, Jacob Julian Seid
Date Issued
May 2017
Journal
Nanoscale
Publisher
Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
Citation
Witten, Jacob, and Katharina Ribbeck. “The Particle in the Spider’s Web: Transport through Biological Hydrogels.” Nanoscale, vol. 9, no. 24, 2017, pp. 8080–95. © 2017 The Royal Society of Chemistry.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Biological hydrogels such as mucus, extracellular matrix, biofilms, and the nuclear pore have diverse functions and compositions, but all act as selectively permeable barriers to the diffusion of particles. Each barrier has a crosslinked polymeric mesh that blocks penetration of large particles such as pathogens, nanotherapeutics, or macromolecules. These polymeric meshes also employ interactive filtering, in which affinity between solutes and the gel matrix controls permeability. Interactive filtering affects the transport of particles of all sizes including peptides, antibiotics, and nanoparticles and in many cases this filtering can be described in terms of the effects of charge and hydrophobicity. The concepts described in this review can guide strategies to exploit or overcome gel barriers, particularly for applications in diagnostics, pharmacology, biomaterials, and drug delivery.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computational and Systems Biology Program
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1039/C6NR09736G
