Supramolecular Biopolymers for Tissue Engineering

Figure 6

(a) Schematic of the “click” nucleic acids used for an 8PEG-thymine macromer crosslinking using a 40-mer adenine ssDNA, a 5-mer ssDNA adenine, and a 40-mer thymine ssDNA. It was observed that the hydrogel would crosslink only in the presence of long thymine-complementary strands. (b) When subjected to a denaturalizing temperature, the stiffness of the hydrogel decreased considerably. However, this mechanism appears to be reversible, as the mechanic properties of the material change accordingly to the input temperature. (c) As the 40-mer adenine ssDNA will anneal with the thymine strands, the crosslinker could potentially bind with multiple 8PEG-T oligomers. These figures have been reproduced with permission from the American Chemical Society [117].

(a)

(b)

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