Grethe V Jensen, Danish Technological Institute, Tåstrup, Denmark

Structural Transitions of Micelles and Proteins in Solution Studied by Time-Resolved Small-Angle Scattering

It is the very nature of soft materials that they can rearrange and change their structure in response to a change of sample parameters such as temperature, pH, ionic strength, or concentration. Small-angle scattering can then be used not only for investigating equilibrium structures, but also for following the kinetics of structurally developing samples. Here I will present time-resolved studies of structural transitions of surfactant micelles and proteins in solution, initiated by fast sample mixing, showing different approaches that can be taken.

The work includes results from my first years in Jan Skov Pedersen’s lab, focused on micelle shape and size transitions, as well as later results on protein unfolding by surfactants in collaboration with Daniel E. Otzen’s lab, but also work on sample mixing and data acquisition on a microfluidic chip, performed in Lise Arleth’s lab at University of Copenhagen, and more recent results on reverse lipid micelles obtained at the NIST Center for Neutron Research.

The lecture is part of the symposium Recent progress in small-angle scattering from soft matter and biological systems on the occasion of Professor Jan Skov Pedersen's 60th birthday.