SKM 2023 – wissenschaftliches Programm

Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Aktualisierungen | Downloads | Hilfe

BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 11: Poster Session I

BP 11.6: Poster

Dienstag, 28. März 2023, 12:30–15:30, P1

Complex formation between Polyethylenimine and mRNA — •Jonas Lehnen¹, Giovanni Settanni², and Friederike Schmid¹ — ¹KOMET 1, Institute of Physics, JGU Mainz, Germany — ²Faculty of Physics and Astronomy, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany

Messenger RNA vaccines have proven invaluable in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the vehicles for non-viral gene delivery Polyethylenimine (PEI) has attracted attention due to its high transfection efficiency. PEI binds to negatively charged mRNA forming polyplexes. These are nanoparticles (NP) of different sizes, depending on the pH used for their assembly as well as salt, PEI and RNA concentration. Small NP have been shown to be critical for high transfection efficiency. We use coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations to examine the effects of the various factors determining polyplex size and gain a better understanding of the processes involved in their formation, with a special interest on the effects of PEI concentrations way above the amount necessary to neutralize the mRNA, following up on recent experimental results. Experimental and atomistic simulation data were used to tune our model with the aim of finding the mechanism responsible for controlling the size of NPs and give a description of the formation process.