Bioinspired Water-soluble Polymers with Grafted Polyamine Chains: Synthesis and Complexation with Oligonucleotides

The siliceous frustules of diatom algae contain complex proteins known as silaffins, which consist of a peptide chain with grafted polyamine chains. These polyamines contain twenty or more nitrogen atoms with trimethylene groups between the nitrogens. We synthesized a set ofpolymers containing grafted long-chain polyamine fragments by using acryloyl chloride(ACh) polymers and activated acrylic acid copolymers as the starting materials. The new polymers contained 0.05 mol%−3.2 mol% of polyamine chains, which corresponded to 0.06−3.56 mmol·g−1 amine groups. The new amine-containing polymers formed complexes with short(19-21-mer) deoxyribonucleic acid(DNA) and ribonucleic acid(RNA) strands, and these complexes penetrated into model yeast cells and A549 lung cancer cell. This study demonstrates the potential of these species based on long-chain polyamines to serve as novel gene delivery systems.