Room temperature ionic liquids interacting with bio-molecules: an overview of experimental and computational studies

We briefly review experimental and computational studies of room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) interacting with important classes of biomolecules, including phospholipids, peptides and proteins, nucleic acids and carbohydrates. Most of these studies have been driven by the interest for RTILs applications as solvents. Thus, available experimental data cover primarily thermodynamic properties such as the reciprocal solubility of RTILs and bio-molecules, as well as phase boundaries. Less extensive data are also available on transport properties such as diffusion and viscosity of homogeneous binary (RTILs/biomolecules) and ternary (RTIL/biomolecules/water) solutions. Most of the structural information at the atomistic level, of interest especially for biochemical, pharmaceutical and nanotechnology applications, has been made available by molecular dynamics simulations. Major exceptions to this statement are represented by the results from NMR and circular dichroism spectroscopy, by selected neutron and X-ray scattering data, and by recent neutron reflectometry measurements on lipid bilayers on surfaces, hydrated by water-RTIL solutions. A final section of our paper summarizes new developments in the field of RTILs based on amino acids, that combine in themselves the two main aspects of our discussion, i.e. ionic liquids and bio-molecules.