Evidence map›Paper›PMID 40222981›Full record

ArticleNature communications2025

Charge symmetry breaking in neutral polyzwitterions.

Yeseul Lee, Murugappan Muthukumar

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Nature communications, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Yeseul LeeDepartment of Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA.ORCID http://orcid.org/0009-0004-5422-3071
Murugappan MuthukumarDepartment of Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA. muthu2346@gmail.com.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7872-4883

Funding

National Science Foundation (NSF) DMR 2015935
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Response of polar and neutral monomers in macromolecules to an electric field in their crowded aqueous solutions remains as an unchartered area of research, in contrast with well understood behavior of ionized groups. Wondering whether such monomers impart merely frictional resistance or cooperate with the other ionic groups in their electrophoretic mobility, we investigate single-molecule electrophoresis of a couple of neutral polyzwitterions which have charge-neutrality with strong acidic group and permanent positive charge within their repeat units. Combining experiments and theory, we study the roles of dipole orientation of zwiterionic monomers and salt identity. Here, we report that charge-neutral polyzwitterions exhibit mobility with rectification in their direction of movement because of charge symmetry breaking arising from differential counterion bindings due to gradients in the local dielectric constant around chain backbone, and thus opening a new avenue to understand dipolar polymers of broad interest and applications.

Identifiers

PMID40222981
PMCPMC11994810

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.