A Polymer Scaffold for Protein Oligomerization

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Abstract
We report the design and synthesis of well-defined polymers for the noncovalent oligomerization of proteins. The reported scaffolds, which were generated by atom-transfer radical polymerization (ATRP), take advantage of the well-characterized interaction between a Ni2+ complex and an oligohistidine sequence (His tag). Thus, our polymers are designed to facilitate the oligomerization of any protein possessing a His tag. We demonstrate that they can oligomerize fibroblast growth factor-8b (FGF-8b) and promote FGF-8b-mediated cell proliferation in the absence of heparin.