Naturally occurring osmolytes are small organic compounds that affect the functioning of the macromolecule and ever-present in the living systems. Trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO), betaine and sarcosine are among the family of methylamines which are a class of osmolytes that may lead to the alteration in the transition behaviour of thermo-responsive polymers (TRPs). In this context, we have extended our work in the direction of exploring influence of various methylamines on the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) of poly (vinyl methyl ether) (PVME). Herein this study, we used various biophysical techniques to explore the impactful aspect of methylamines on the PVME polymer. The structural integrity of the additive is found to play a major role in altering the phase transition temperature of PVME. These additives are observed to have high binding affinity for water as compared to the polymer which result in the swollen to collapsed transition of PVME at the lower temperatures than the typical LCST of the polymer. One of the common aspects in all the three additives is their positive and negative charges separation that allows their effective binding with the water molecules. Although, each osmolytes decreases the LCST of the PVME, however, highest decrease is observed with sarcosine and lowest for TMAO. In case of sarcosine, less sterically hindered N atom may directs the possibility of its H-bonding ability towards water as compared to that for TMAO and betaine containing sterically hindered N atom.

天然存在的渗透压剂是影响大分子功能的小有机化合物，并且一直存在于生命系统中。三甲胺N-氧化物（TMAO），甜菜碱和肌氨酸属于一类渗透剂，可能导致热响应性聚合物（TRP）的转变行为发生改变的甲胺类。在这种情况下，我们已将工作扩展到探索各种甲胺对聚（乙烯基甲基醚）（PVME）的较低临界溶液温度（LCST）的影响的方向。在本研究中，我们使用了多种生物物理技术来探索甲胺对PVME聚合物的影响。发现添加剂的结构完整性在改变PVME的相变温度中起主要作用。与聚合物相比，观察到这些添加剂对水具有高的结合亲和力，这导致在比聚合物的典型LCST更低的温度下PVME的溶胀至塌陷的转变。所有三种添加剂的共同方面之一是它们的正电荷和负电荷分离，这使它们可以与水分子有效结合。尽管每种渗透物均会降低PVME的LCST，但肌氨酸的降低幅度最大，而TMAO的降低幅度最小。在肌氨酸的情况下，与含空间位阻N原子的TMAO和甜菜碱相比，较少位阻的N原子可能将其H键合能力导向了水。