ABSTRACT
The concept of macromolecular crowding (MC) appeared at the beginning of the 1980s, along with the necessity to study the biochemical processes taking place in living cells. The average distance between macromolecules in a crowded media can be much smaller than their own size, and the volume they occupy is unavailable to other molecules, conducting to excluded volume effects. The living cell is a highly structured and compartmented media, and thus it enhances the effects of MC. Both experimental and computational studies are performed considering the effects of MC on biological molecules and their processes. MC effects on biological molecules have important applications for in vitro biotechnological and nanotechnological processes: drug delivery systems, dispersion of nanomaterials, assembly of nanoparticles, interfacial reactions, electrochemical deoxyribonucleic acid sensors, and gene expression in synthetic cellular nanosystems. There are few contradictory data reported in specific literature: some studies reveal clear effects of MC on the structural and dynamic properties of biological molecules as others do not.
