| Summary: | Under investigation are the structural properties of gum arabic, an industrially important biopolymer for use as a stabilizer or in drug delivery, using Analytical Ultracentrifugation—a well-established, matrix-free probe for macromolecular size and shape. These results are combined with chromatographically-coupled methods (multi-angle light scattering, differential press imbalance viscometry) to provide a global analysis of its structure in varying ionic strength conditions. This analysis indicates that gum Arabic may have a compact, elliptical structure in solution, the significance of which for biotechnological use is indicated. This modelling method can be applied to other biopolymers and synthetic polymers.
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