Tailoring Peptide Self-Assembly and Formation of 2D Nanoribbons on Mica and HOPG Surface.

Hao Kong,Guozheng Yang,Yun Chen,Gang Wei,Bin Liu

doi:10.3390/ma15010310

Abstract

Studying the interactions between biomolecules and material interfaces play a crucial role in the designing and synthesizing of functional bionanomaterials with tailored structure and function. Previously, a lot of studies were performed on the self-assembly of peptides in solution through internal and external stimulations, which mediated the creation of peptide nanostructures from zero-dimension to three-dimension. In this study, we demonstrate the self-assembly behavior of the GNNQQNY peptide on the surface of mica and highly oriented pyrolytic graphite through tailoring the self-assembly conditions. Various factors, such as the type of dissolvent, peptide concentration, pH value, and evaporation period on the formation of peptide nanofibers and nanoribbons with single- and bi-directional arrays are investigated. It is found that the creation of peptide nanoribbons on both mica and HOPG can be achieved effectively through adjusting and optimizing the experimental parameters. Based on the obtained results, the self-assembly and formation mechanisms of peptide nanoribbons on both material interfaces are discussed. It is expected that the findings obtained in this study will inspire the design of motif-specific peptides with high binding affinity towards materials and mediate the green synthesis of peptide-based bionanomaterials with unique function and application potential.

Highlights

Academic Editor: VictorPeptides are a kind of natural macromolecular compound composed of amino acids, which have exhibited various functions and bioactivities, showing wide applications in various fields [1]
With the development of nanotechnology and materials science, it has been realized that the aggregated peptide/protein nanostructures are excellent precursors or templates for the synthesis of functional nanomaterials
Based on these atomic force microscopy (AFM) data, we suggest that the addition of organic polar solvents to the peptide solution system promotes the formation of peptide nanoribbons/nanofibers with directional arrays, and different organic polarity solvents cause specific effects on the selfassembly and conformation transition of GNNQQNY peptides [14]

Summary

Introduction

Academic Editor: VictorPeptides are a kind of natural macromolecular compound composed of amino acids, which have exhibited various functions and bioactivities, showing wide applications in various fields [1]. Nanomaterials formed by self-assembly of peptides have superior and unique physical and chemical properties, such as high mechanical strength, high thermal stability, high biocompatibility, simple preparation, and customizable functions [5,6,7]. These excellent properties provide peptides with a wide range of biological applications, such as biomedicine, bioimaging, photothermal diagnosis and treatment, biosensing, tissue engineering, and other applications [8,9,10,11,12,13]

Methods

Results

Conclusion