Interactions of cationic dendrigraft polymers with oligonucleotides and morphology of the resulting complexes.

Abstract

The high density of negatively charged phosphate groups on ONs allows the formation of stable complexes with synthetic cationic polyelectrolytes (PEs). Even though DNA complexes with quaternized poly-vinylpyridine linear chains were previously reported to increase the efficiency of cell transformation, no report has been made for DNA complexes with dendrigraft PEs. For the current investigation, cationic dendrigraft polymers with pH-independent fully charged quaternized amine groups were synthesized. The structure of dendrigraft PEs and their complexes with ONs in solution was investigated by small-angle neutron scattering (SANS).