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* Pritzker School of Medicine, and
Department of Chemistry, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Correspondence: Address reprint requests to R. Stephen Berry, E-mail: berry{at}uchicago.edu.
| ABSTRACT |
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| INTRODUCTION |
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The origin of the hydrophobic force is a long-standing problem (3
). Chandler and co-workers suggested that the free energy of solvation scales with volume for small hydrophobes and with surface area for large hydrophobes (4
6
). Strong hydrophobic forces are expected to occur on a molecular length scale at the crossover between these two types of behaviors and are associated with the formation of a drying interface between the large hydrophobe and water (4
). This drying interface concept was used also by Berne in a model for the dewetting-induced collapse of two close hydrophobe molecules (7
10
). The dewetting is attributed to the unfavorable interactions between water and hydrophobic solute and it was inferred that the process is initiated by short range repulsive forces acting at this interface. Under such circumstances, an interaction between well-separated hydrophobic surfaces may potentially arise from the growth and bridging of submicroscopic bubbles between the surfaces (11
,12
).
Distinct from this drying-induced interaction for adjacent hydrophobic surfaces, we show how two hydrophobes may attract each other at longer distances, via dipole-dipole and induction-dispersion effects generated by the polarization fields of the water structured at the interface (Fig. 1). Specifically, this analysis reveals that the mechanism of the hydrophobic aggregation may involve an initial step in which nonpolar solutes approach one another via long-range electrostatic forces. This precursor regime occurs before the entropy of releasing the water layers (4
10
) and attractive, short-range van der Waals forces may provide enough driving force to "dry out" the contacting surfaces.
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| THE POLARIZATION FIELD OF WATER STRUCTURED AT A HYDROPHOBIC INTERFACE |
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The inhibition of H-bond exchange between water molecules at a hydrophobic interface hinders the reorientation of the water molecular dipole and facilitates the occurrence of persistent dipole pairs (2
). The spacing
between the molecular dipoles in a pair depends on an entropic penalty, which measures the depletion of water H-bonding. For instance, if m is the average number of H-bond exchange possibilities for a bulk water molecule and f is a parameter measuring the degree of depletion of these H-bonds at the hydrophobic interface, the entropic penalty of the interface water molecules will be
(2
). Consequently, the variable
can take any value in the range given by the typical distance between bulk water molecules a0 (
) and
,
, the critical distance between two dipoles in a pair. The distance
is derived from equilibrium energy considerations (2
). Here,
is the number density of bulk water, d is the magnitude of the dipole moment
of a single water molecule (for convenience, we assign
to have a magnitude of unity), and
is the Lorentz energy of a dipole pair,
;
represents the dielectric constant of the vacuum. This pair correlation depends also on temperature T (
).
Because
is random within its range (
), the vector dipole field
at each site in the correlated region is also a random variable, and so is the thermodynamic average
...
of the water molecular dipole moment
,
. Therefore the mean value of the water molecular dipole in a fixed internal field
of all the other water molecular dipoles in the correlated region is obtained by averaging
over the probability distribution
of all fields. This is
. The probability distribution of the random internal field
acting on each water molecule in the correlated region is given by the self-consistent integral equation (2
)
![]() | (1) |
and
. Here
is the number of sites in the correlated region, N of which are occupied by molecular dipoles. In principle, N0 is a measure of the water-accessible surface area ASA of the hydrophobic unit, i.e.,
, where a is the radial dimension of a water molecule.
By using Eq. 1 we readily obtain the average polarization in the correlated region as a function of T from the equation
![]() | (2) |
For simplicity, we assume in the following that
, where
is the Langevin function
. Fig. 2 shows
as a function of
. The curves reflect water behavior under various hydrophobic depletions f = 1, 2, and 3. We also note that f can be related to the shape of the hydrophobic unit and that, due to obvious geometrical considerations, the situation f = 3 corresponds to water molecules rotationally immobilized by hydrophobic interfaces (caged water); f = 2 is appropriate for describing water molecules at planar interfaces. Small hydrophobic species lead to
and a subsequent decrease of ordering. Therefore f
1, in this case, which yields small values for
; see Fig. 2. A fraction of 1015% of correlated water molecules persists above room temperature (
). This vanishes rapidly with increasing T,
, and approaches 1 asymptotically at low temperatures,
, (not shown).
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| THE PRECURSOR STAGE OF THE HYDROPHOBIC AGGREGATION: THE LONG-RANGE POTENTIAL OF HYDROPHOBIC ATTRACTION |
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(see Fig. 1 a). Therefore, if the hydrophobes are free to reorient and move in water, the shells of polarized water will drag these solutes together (18
Moreover, if the hydrophobic units are polarizable (32
), the polarizing field of outer correlated water dipoles induces a dipole
,
, along the axis (
) of highest polarizability of the molecule (see Fig. 1 b). Here,
is the polarizability of the molecule and l is its characteristic length. They depend on the geometry of the hydrophobic molecule. The overall average interaction energy between two identical (nonrigid) hydrophobic units results in an attractive energy term varying as
of the form
![]() | (3) |
Here r can be regarded as the instantaneous distance between two neighboring hydrophobic units. If we write
, where
is the density of hydrophobic units (the number of hydrophobic units in the volume V), then Eq. 3 can be expressed in the form
![]() | (4) |
By looking at the above equation, we can see that, to strengthen the interaction, water molecules must leave the thin layer separating two hydrophobes when the system comes to equilibrium (7
10
). This shows that, within the Berne model (7
10
) of dry hydrophobic surfaces in contact at equilibrium, the forces that bind hydrophobes together can perfectly well be all the van der Waals contacts between them. But those forces have short range, and they cannot account for why the hydrophobes ever want to come together. The interaction mechanism described by Eq. 3 gives the long-range potential that induces them to approach one another. Then, when they are very close, the entropy of releasing the water layers (4
10
) and of course the van der Waals attractions may well provide enough driving force to "dry out" the contact surface.
| DISCUSSION |
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with the Lorentz energy
of a dipole pair. We can see that the hydrophobic interaction depends directly on the hydrophobic exposure to water (
) and on the relative volume partition of the two phases (
). For small hydrophobic species we have
, which also means a low ordering (
) because small hydrophobic solutes cannot deplete many H-bonds. This, in turn, yields small values for
, which may eventually increase by increasing
. The attractive energy
depends explicitly on the shape of the hydrophobic molecule through
and l and, implicitly, through the depletion parameter f, as discussed above. Because
decreases at high temperatures as shown in Fig. 2, thermal agitation can be sufficient to overcome hydrophobic attraction (
for
). Thus the attraction between the two hydrophobes is typically low in comparison with usual electrostatic forces (
) and depends on the amount of correlated water at the interface. However, in the range of temperatures of biological interest (
), the hydrophobic attraction can be sufficiently strong to keep nonpolar molecules together. For example, under the assumptions that the relative volume partition of the water and hydrophobic species is
, the hydrophobic molecules are nonrigid, and
, the energy of the attraction per surface area
(where a2 represents the surface area required to place a H-bond), at
, is
. This is the order of the magnitude of the energy of H-binding of water molecules at a protein-water interface at physiological temperature,
per bond (
) (33
is also in the range of the measured value for the surface tension of oil-water interface (
) (34
Another interesting observation is that the induced dipole
may align water dipole pairs along the axis of high polarizability of the molecule. This second-order perturbation field is purely the result of induction and has a self-consistent character. This is the field acting on the water molecular dipoles
due to the electric dipole
induced by their polarization field
in the hydrophobe. This interaction is always attractive and reveals that oil and water molecules actually attract each other (35
). Being a second-order effect, this attraction is weaker than the attraction of water molecules for each other (21
).
Several interesting experimental observations need to be mentioned at this point. More than a decade ago (19
), atomic force microscopy (AFM) measurements showed that the energy of attraction between two hydrophobic monolayers deposited on mica, at 3 nm separation distance and at 25°C, is about
per A°2, which is in the range of predictions of this theory. The origin of the attraction between such surfactant-coated surfaces is subject to a long controversy (see Meyer et al. (20
) for a chronological review). Recently (20
), AFM images of such surfaces showed that, after immersing them in water, the hydrophobic monolayer transforms in patchy bilayers. Thus, the positive charges on the surfactant bilayer and the negative charges on mica naturally align themselves to generate a long-range electrostatic attraction between these surfaces. In this context, only the initial step of forming patchy bilayers after immersing the surfactant in water would be a hydrophobic effect. An interesting question is "What triggers this spontaneous transformation?" Only the weak van der Waals interaction of water with the hydrophobic monolayer might be not enough to detach the surfactant coat and make it roll on the mica substrate. Our approach suggests that the polarization of water at the interface with the hydrophobic monolayer might play an important role in initiating this transformation. Moreover, the long-range interaction between the surfactant-coated surfaces reported by Mayer et al. (20
) is likely to be augmented by the polarizability of the hydrophobic monolayer itself, in the manner we discussed above.
It is also worthy mentioning that the above estimate of the hydrophobic attraction (
per A°2) is also in the force range measured in spontaneous resealing of hydrated lipid pores in a plasma membrane (36
). To reseal spontaneously, these pores cannot exceed a radial dimension of
1 nm or less (37
). In addition, sealing larger pores in a plasma membrane is mediated by amphiphilic polymers, and the efficiency of sealing seems to depend critically on the presence of the hydrophobic core in the polymer structure (38
). Thus, this approach can be valuable in optimizing the structure of surfactants for sealing disrupted membranes after injuries.
| LONG-RANGE ATTRACTION BETWEEN HYDROPHOBES IN WATER CAN CHANGE THE MAGNETIC SIGNAL OF SURROUNDING WATER |
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). By quantifying the delay time in the relaxation process induced by different fractions
of interface water protons, magnetic relaxation measurements not only can detect this slow moving water in solutions containing biomolecules, but can also provide details about the incipient stage of the hydrophobic aggregation described above, as follows. Suppose that one measures the transverse magnetic relaxation time T2 of water protons in a solution containing hydrophobic molecules and
percent water. At the time
, when hydrophobes are well dispersed, the measured T2 represents the effective relaxation of a system with two phases (k = 2): water protons surrounding a single hydrophobic molecule
, which, according to the scaled particle theory (39
, and the remaining bulk-like water
. At
, the long-range interaction between hydrophobic molecules would lead to the formation of large hydrophobic assemblies caging water molecules inside. This introduces a new water phase
, which is a function of the average packing density of a hydrophobic assembly
. The observed transverse relaxation time would change to a new value
(
). This new value can be predicted based on the Zimmerman-Brittin model (ZB)
(40
of water molecules is different in each water phase (
). This depends on the Larmor frequency of the MR scanner (
) and values of the time (
) for thermal randomization of each spin population
, which can be computed or measured experimentally. In Fig. 3 we present
as a function of
for various (imposed) values of the parameter
. We can infer from this result that the occurrence of hydrophobic assemblies (
> 0) is likely to change the MR signal of surrounding water. Therefore, measurements of magnetic relaxation of water in solution containing hydrophobic solutes can prove the existence of the precursor, long-range interaction regime of the hydrophobic aggregation. In addition, a kinetic T2-MR imaging measurement of hydrophobic solution based on the above scheme would allow us to derive actual
maps. These maps can be used to extract dynamical information about hydrophobic interactions.
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| FINAL REMARKS |
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This theory predicts the consequences of confining water in nanoscale hydrophobic environments and offers a reliable way to describe them in a quantitative manner. The approach can be valuable in questions related to various engineering applications as, for example, controlling the formation of nanoparticles, improving the quality of surface catalysts, as well as designing synthetic molecular chaperones. Also, understanding essential features of the hydrophobic hydration opens new ways for using MR imaging to infer structural changes at the molecular level in cells and living tissues (e.g., deciphering MR images of biological tissues containing denatured proteins), an initiative with immediate clinical applications.
| ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS |
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We acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation (R.S.B.) for part of this work.
| FOOTNOTES |
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Submitted on April 12, 2006; accepted for publication August 28, 2006.
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