Journal
JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL AND FOOD CHEMISTRY
Volume 62, Issue 46, Pages 11017-11023Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/jf501763r
Keywords
cellulose; molecular dynamics simulations; aqueous solution; hydration; water structuring
Funding
- SciDAC Program by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Biological and Environmental Research
- Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research
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Many important biological solutes possess not only polar and hydrogen-bonding functionalities but also weakly hydrating, or hydrophobic, surfaces. While the aggregation of these hydrophobic surfaces has been shown to play an important role in the aggregation of individual chains of cellulose, it is not known whether the water structuring imposed by these hydrophobic surfaces more closely resembles that associated with small hydrophobic solutes like methane and fats or more closely resembles that associated with extended hydrophobic surfaces like mica or waxy planes. By using molecular dynamics simulations to characterize the water molecule orientations over different regions of the 100 surface of cellulose in contact with water, it was found that the hydrophobic strips of the cellulose crystal are sufficiently narrow that they hydrate like a fatty acid chain, rather than like a more extended surface, suggesting that their aggregation would be dominated by entropy rather than enthalpy.
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