Proteins, surface roughness

FK Pettit, JU Bowie. Protein surface roughness and small molecular binding sites. J Mol Biol 285 1377-1382, 1999. 

A number of refinements and applications are in the literature. Corrections may be made for discreteness of charge [36] or the excluded volume of the hydrated ions [19, 37]. The effects of surface roughness on the electrical double layer have been treated by several groups [38-41] by means of perturbative expansions and numerical analysis. Several geometries have been treated, including two eccentric spheres such as found in encapsulated proteins or drugs [42], and biconcave disks with elastic membranes to model red blood cells [43]. The double-layer repulsion between two spheres has been a topic of much attention due to its importance in colloidal stability. A new numeri-... 

Although this last point may not be general, the others are now accepted as rough rules of thumb for protein adsorption, though clearly each protein-surface-solution system is unique and may not exhibit all of the features noted. 

Very qualitatively — protein adsorption is roughly understood. The challenge now is to take what we know about proteins, surfaces, and adsorption and to begin to quantitatively model the protein adsorption process. 

Timehenko, A.A. Galzitskaya, O.V. Serdyuk, I.N. Roughness of the globular protein surface analysis of high resolution x-ray data. Proteins 1997, 28, 194-201. 

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