Reverse micelle

Reverse micelle (reverse micelle, inverse micelle, reverse micelle ) is a micelle in which hydrophilic groups form the core, and hydrophobic ones form the outer shell. A reverse micelle is formed by surfactant molecules if the dispersion medium is a non-polar organic solvent. They are not covalently bound macromolecular systems, but consist of a large number of individual molecules. Exist only in solutions, which does not allow X-ray diffraction analysis or the use of high-resolution microscopy in the study.

Reverse micelles can be considered as nanometer-sized reactors, in each of which one enzyme molecule falls on one micelle ^[1] .

They are used to stabilize enzymes by introducing additional cross-linking of functional groups present on the surface of the protein, because in the reverse micelle system, unlike homogeneous systems , no protein cross-linking occurs ^[1] .