The Effect of Salt Concentration and Cation Valency on Interactions Between Mucin-CoatedHydrophobic Surfaces

摘要

The AFM colloidal probe technique has been utilized in order to investigate the forces acting between preadsorbed mucin layers on uncharged, hydrophobic mercaptohexadecane-coated gold surfaces. Layers with some highly extended tails are formed when the adsorption proceeds from 25 ppm mucin solution in 30 mM NaNO_3. The effects of salt concentration and cation valency on the interactions have been explored using NaCl, CaCl_2, and LaCl_3 in the concentration range 1-100 mM. It will be shown that the results in NaCl, where the tail length decreases as the salt concentration is increased, can be rationalized by considering the polyelectrolyte nature of mucin and the screening of intralayer electrostatic interactions between charged groups, mainly anionic sialic acid. When multivalent cations are present in solution a significant compaction of the mucin layer occurs even at low concentrations (1 mM), suggesting binding of these ions to the anionic sites of mucin. The results are discussed in relation to previous data from quartz crystal microbalance measurements on the same systems.