Paper Number
PO38
Session
Poster Session
Title
Dynamics of filamentous viral nanoparticles in semi-dilute polymer solutions
Presentation Date and Time
October 17, 2018 (Wednesday) 6:30
Track / Room
Poster Session / Woodway II/III
Authors
- Smith, Maxwell (University of Houston, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering)
- Poling-Skutvik, Ryan (University of Houston, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering)
- Willson, Richard C. (University of Houston, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering)
- Conrad, Jacinta C. (University of Houston, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering)
Author and Affiliation Lines
Maxwell Smith, Ryan Poling-Skutvik, Richard C. Willson, and Jacinta C. Conrad
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204
Speaker / Presenter
Smith, Maxwell
Text of Abstract
Bacteriophage, viral nanoparticles that infect bacteria, are widely used as uniform, anisotropic building blocks for applications in electronics and sensing. These applications often require bacteriophage (phage) to be controllably transported through complex fluids that contain polymers, macromolecules, or proteins. As one example, phage employed as reporter particles in ultrasensitive lateral-flow assays must be transported through biological fluids to capture sites on a functionalized membrane – with the assay sensitivity depending in part on the efficient transport of phage. How nanoparticle anisotropy affects transport in complex fluids in which characteristic length scales of the fluid and particles are comparable, however, remains incompletely understood. Here, we investigate the dynamics of phage with varying aspect ratios in semi-dilute polymer solutions using fluorescence microscopy. Phage diffuse faster than predicted by the Stokes-Einstein relation using the bulk viscosity of the polymer solutions. The normalized diffusivity of the phage is approximately constant at low polymer concentration and then decreases at a crossover polymer concentration. Normalized length scales based on the ratio of phage scales (radius, length) to the polymer correlation length were unable to collapse the diffusivities onto those of spherical particles. This result suggests that an intermediate length scale, between phage length and radius, controls phage diffusion through a crowded medium. These results provide insight into the transport behavior of anisotropic phage and, more broadly, are expected to guide the development of applications that exploit particle anisotropy to generate unique functional properties in composite materials