The goal of this work was to understand the key factors determining the DNA compacting capacity of single-chained cationic surfactants. Fluorescence, zeta potential, circular dichroism, gel electrophoresis and AFM measurements were carried out in order to study the condensation of the nucleic acid resulting from the formation of the surfactant-DNA complexes. The apparent equilibrium binding constant of the surfactants to the nucleic acid, K_app, estimated from the experimental results obtained in the ethidium bromide competitive binding experiments, can be considered directly related to the ability of a given surfactant as a DNA compacting agent. The plot of ln(K_app) vs. ln(cmc), cmc being the critical micelle concentration, for all the bromide and chloride surfactants studied, was found to be a reasonably good linear correlation. This result shows that hydrophobic interactions mainly control the surfactant DNA compaction efficiency.

这项工作的目的是了解决定单链阳离子表面活性剂DNA压缩能力的关键因素。进行荧光，ζ电势，圆二色性，凝胶电泳和AFM测量，以研究由于表面活性剂-DNA复合物的形成而产生的核酸的缩合。从在溴化乙锭竞争性结合实验中获得的实验结果估计，表面活性剂与核酸的表观平衡结合常数K _app可以被认为与给定的表面活性剂作为DNA紧实剂的能力直接相关。ln（K _app的图）与ln（cmc）的关系，对于所有研究的溴化物和氯化物表面活性剂，cmc是临界胶束浓度，被发现具有相当好的线性相关性。该结果表明疏水相互作用主要控制表面活性剂DNA的压缩效率。