title: Water structuring over the hydrophobic surface of cellulose.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Food Science, Cornell University , Ithaca, New York 14853, United States.
authors.forename: Hitomi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Miyamoto
authors.forename: Udo
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Schnupf
authors.forename: John W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Brady
mesh_terms: D002482:Cellulose / Q000737:chemistry*; D019277:Entropy; D006860:Hydrogen Bonding; D057927:Hydrophobic and Hydrophilic Interactions; D056004:Molecular Dynamics Simulation; D014867:Water / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D014867:Water; D002482:Cellulose
keywords: aqueous solution; cellulose; hydration; molecular dynamics simulations; water structuring