Investigating the Structure of Phytoglycogen using Coarse-Grained Simulations

Phytoglycogen is a dendritic nanoparticle composed of repeatedly branching chains of glucose. Despite glucose being a common form of energy storage in plants, many questions still remain about the structure of this naturally occurring particle. In this work, pytoglycogen was modelled with a coarse-grained approach, simplifying each glucose unit to a single particle. A hydrophobic attraction between chains was observed in atomistic simulations and this was modelled in the the coarse-grained simulations with a simple attraction between glucose particles. The strength of this attraction was used as a free parameter to investigate how changing it changes the structure of the particle. The simulated particles with radii similar to those seen in experiment were observed to have a hairy colloid shape, with a dense core and hairs extending out from the core.