Periodically sequenced peptides: A new tool for nanoscale materials synthesis
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1
City College of New York, Chemical Engineering, United States
Synthesizing useful, periodically-sequenced, self-assembling, amphipathic polypeptides is difficult due to increasing polydispersity indices of large molecular weight polymer systems. Accounting for this, we engineered amino acid dimers that polymerize into amphipathic chains with alternating hydrophilic/hydrophobic side groups. This system's periodicity is typical of amino acid sequences that self-assemble into beta-sheets. We limit polydispersity in the growing polypeptide chains through changes to the kinetics of growth by transport-limited chain elongation and partitioning of large molecular weight polypeptides to interfaces. We show that in the absence of a bulk micellular interface, standard condensation polymerization occurs. However, the amphipathic character of our peptide chains increases with increasing molecular weight, resulting in a polypeptide that preferentially partitions into surfactant micelles with increasing molecular weight. Grown that way, with exposure to large, diffuse, bulk-phase interfacial areas, this kinetically-limited growth narrows the polydispersity of our polypeptides. We quantify polydispersity indices using multi-angle light scattering and characterize evolving sheet-like secondary structure using circular dichroism for various amino acid dimer systems. Our results show that the peptides grown in micelle-containing media show significantly enhanced self-assembly and narrowed polydispersity indices. We further characterize these self-assemblies as Langmuir-Blodgett films when the polypeptide partitions strongly to an air-water interface, and image them using Brewster angle microscopy. We conclude that transport-limited polymerization shows great promise in the synthesis of low-cost, surface-active, self-assembling polypeptides.
National Science Foundation, Division of Materials Research; National Science Foundation, Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems
Keywords:
self-assembly,
amphiphile,
Polymeric material,
Polypeptide
Conference:
10th World Biomaterials Congress, Montréal, Canada, 17 May - 22 May, 2016.
Presentation Type:
Poster
Topic:
Naturally-derived materials and biopolymers
Citation:
Kubilius
M and
Tu
RS
(2016). Periodically sequenced peptides: A new tool for nanoscale materials synthesis.
Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.
Conference Abstract:
10th World Biomaterials Congress.
doi: 10.3389/conf.FBIOE.2016.01.02762
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Received:
27 Mar 2016;
Published Online:
30 Mar 2016.