Polyethylene Glycol Size and Protein-Complex Stability

Abstract

Concentrated solutions of synthetic polymers are often used to stabilize proteins. Less is known about their effects on protein complex stability and there are few systematic studies on the effect of polymer molecular weight. Protein-protein interactions are different under crowded conditions than they are in dilute solutions. Classical theory predicts polymers to interact with proteins only through stabilizing hard-core repulsions, which would exclusively favor the more compact state of the protein complex.