Polymer stabilized lipid nanodiscs offer enormous potential as tools for enabling membrane protein structural studies & biophysics. Previously we studied nanodisc formation using a poly(styrene-alt-maleic acid) copolymer, and also with a commercially available poly(styrene-alt-maleimide) (PSMI). We now wish to study the polymer chemistry in more detail to investigate the effect of structural changes to help determine how the disc structure is stabilized. We have used RAFT polymerisation to prepare well defined poly(styrene-alt-maleic acid) polymers with a diblock or triblock structure and also where the styrene has been partially sulfonated or instead incorporating acrylic rather than maleic acid. These variations in the hydrophilicity of the polymer alter the aggregate size in preliminary DLS studies but contrast variation SANS is needed to determine the structures formed with lipids.
