Electrostatic Interactions Between Glycosaminoglycan Molecules
SONG Fan1,2, MOYNE Christian2, BAI Yi-Long1
1State Key Laboratory of Nonlinear Mechanics (LNM), Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080
2LEMTA-CNRS-INPL-UHP (UMR 7563), 2, Avenue de la Forêt de Haye, 54504 Vandoeuvre lès Nancy cedex, France
Electrostatic Interactions Between Glycosaminoglycan Molecules
SONG Fan1,2;MOYNE Christian2;BAI Yi-Long1
1State Key Laboratory of Nonlinear Mechanics (LNM), Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080
2LEMTA-CNRS-INPL-UHP (UMR 7563), 2, Avenue de la Forêt de Haye, 54504 Vandoeuvre lès Nancy cedex, France
Abstract： The electrostatic interactions between nearest-neighbouring chondroitin sulfate glycosaminoglycan (CS-GAG) molecular chains are obtained on the bottle brush conformation of proteoglycan aggrecan based on an asymptotic solution of the Poisson-Boltzmann equation the CS-GAGs satisfy under the physiological conditions of articular cartilage. The present results show that the interactions are associated intimately with the minimum separation distance and mutual angle between the molecular chains themselves. Further analysis indicates that the electrostatic interactions are not only expressed to be purely exponential in separation distance and decrease with the increasing mutual angle but also dependent sensitively on the saline concentration in the electrolyte solution within the tissue, which is in agreement with the existed relevant conclusions.
2005, Vol. 22 
