(563c) Role of Charge Patterning and Hydrophobicity in Peptide-Based Complex Coacervates

Complex coacervates have been used as a versatile materials platform to explore the material microenvironment with a goal of facilitating a plethora of biochemical and biomedical applications ranging from biosensors and catalysts to refrigeration free vaccines. Complex coacervates are materials that are formed by the associative phase separation of two oppositely charged polymers (polycation and polyanion), which is driven by an electrostatic attraction and an entropically driven complexation. Here, we design and synthesize various patterned peptides as model polymers to study the role of charge patterning and hydrophobicity in our coacervate formation. Although there has been extensive effort at accurately describing this phase behavior phenomenon, there is still a need to understand how it is affected by the specific chemistry of the polymers involved. Here, we use a combination of a systematic practical approach and a validated innovative theoretical approach to incorporate sequence effects and hydrophobicity into our physical understanding of our system and thereby broadening the range of chemical functionalities in our polymers.