Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Feb 1:583:553-562.
doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2020.09.023. Epub 2020 Sep 16.

Monolayer wall nanotubes self-assembled from short peptide bolaamphiphiles

Yurong Zhao  1 , Xuzhi Hu  2 , Limin Zhang  1 , Dong Wang  1 , Stephen M King  3 , Sarah E Rogers  3 , Jiqian Wang  1 , Jian R Lu  4 , Hai Xu  5
Affiliations

Monolayer wall nanotubes self-assembled from short peptide bolaamphiphiles

Yurong Zhao et al. J Colloid Interface Sci. .

Abstract

In spite of extensive research, it remains a formidable challenge to control the dimension of the nanostructures self-assembled from short designed peptides. In this work, we show that peptide bolaamphiphiles form monolayer wall nanotubes, facilitated by the interplay between the side chain structure and hydrophobicity of the central residues. The peptide KI4K self-assembles into nanotubes with a width of ~ 100 nm, but changes in the molecular structure of amino acid side chains could hugely impact the nanostructures formed. The three variants of KI4K, via the substitution of aromatic amino acids (F, Y, and Dopa) for the I residue closest to the C-terminus, could substantially reduce nanotube diameters, indicating a significant steric hindrance of the benzene rings on the lateral packing of β-sheets. However, the introduction of hydroxyl groups on the benzene rings alleviates the steric effect, with nanotube diameter increasing in the order of KI3FK, KI3YK, and KI3DopaK, suggesting the formation of side chain H-bonds between β-sheets in addition to hydrophobic contacts. Because the self-assembly process of KI3DopaK nanotubes is slow, key intermediates and their structural details are well characterized. With increasing incubation time, monolayered twisted ribbons and helical ribbons grow into mature KI3DopaK nanotubes via the pitch closing route.

Keywords: Formation pathway; Intermediate; Nanotube; Peptide bolaamphiphile; Self-assembly.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

LinkOut - more resources