Probing Macromolecular Conformation in Restricted Geometry by PEF: Application to Hydrophobically Modified PAMAM Dendrimers Isolated Inside Surfactant Micelles.

The conformation of a series of zero-generation polyamidoamine dendrimers end-labeled with four 1-pyrene-butyroyl, -hexanoyl, -octanoyl, -decanoyl, and -dodecanoyl derivatives, referred to as the PyCX-PAMAM-G0 samples with X = 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12, respectively, was characterized in N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF), dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), and aqueous solutions of 50 mM sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) or 50 mM dodecyltrimethylammonium bromide (DTAB). The conformation of the PyCX-PAMAM-G0 samples was determined from the global model-free analysis (MFA) of the fluorescence decays, which yielded the average rate constant (⟨k⟩) for pyrene excimer formation (PEF) between an excited and a ground-state pyrenyl labels, with ⟨k⟩ being proportional to the local concentration ([Py]_loc) of the pyrenyl labels within the macromolecular volume; ⟨k⟩-vs-[Py]_loc plots yielded straight lines passing through the origin in DMF and DMSO, demonstrating that the internal segments of the dendrimers obeyed Gaussian statistics in these two solvents. In aqueous surfactant solutions, the hydrophobic pyrenyl labels induced the interactions of the PyCX-PAMAM-G0 dendrimers with the SDS and DTAB micelles. Plots of ⟨k⟩ as a function of [Py]_loc yielded straight lines passing through the origin for the PyCX-PAMAM-G0 samples with X equal to 4, 6, and 8, indicating that the internal segments of these three dendrimers obeyed Gaussian statistics within the surfactant micelles. However, ⟨k⟩ departed from the straight lines for the PyCX-PAMAM-G0 samples with X = 10 and 12 associated with the SDS and DTAB micelles. This behavior indicated that [Py]_loc was much larger than expected for the dendrimers prepared with longer alkanoyl linkers. This behavior was attributed to strong hydrophobic interactions between the longer linkers and the dodecyl tails of the surfactants in the hydrophobic core of the micelles, which induced a conformational change for the dendrimers inside the micelles, that could be probed at the molecular level by PEF.