Over the past 20 years we have been deeply involved with the synthesis and applications of stimuli‐responsive polymer systems, especially polymer‐biomolecule conjugates. The work of Toyoichi Tanaka has been a constant inspiration for our work and this article is dedicated to him. This article summarizes the research that we have carried out along with many collaborators on polymer‐protein conjugates. We include conjugates prepared by random polymer conjugation to lysine amino groups, and also those prepared by site‐specific conjugation of the polymer to specific amino acid sites that are genetically‐engineered into the known amino acid sequence of the protein. We describe the preparation and properties of thermally‐sensitive, random conjugates to enzymes and several affinity recognition proteins. We have also prepared site‐specific conjugates to streptavidin. with temperature‐sensitive polymers, pH‐sensitive polymers, and light‐sensitive polymers. The preparation of these conjugates and their many fascinating applications are reviewed in this article.
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Hoffman et al. (2004) studied this question.