Abstract
Throughout nature, self-assembly gives rise to functional supramolecular biomaterials that can perform complex tasks with extraordinary efficiency and specificity. Inspired by these examples, self-assembly is increasingly used to fabricate synthetic supramolecular biomaterials for diverse applications in biomedicine and biotechnology. Peptides are particularly attractive as building blocks for these materials because they are based on naturally derived amino acids that are biocompatible and biodegradable; they can be synthesized using scalable and cost-effective methods, and their sequence can be tailored to encode formation of diverse architectures. To endow synthetic supramolecular biomaterials with functional capabilities, it is now commonplace to conjugate self-assembling building blocks to molecules having a desired functional property, such as selective recognition of a cell surface receptor or soluble protein, antigenicity, or enzymatic activity. This review surveys recent advances in using self-assembling peptides as handles to incorporate biologically active molecules into supramolecular biomaterials. Particular emphasis is placed on examples of functional nanofibers, nanovesicles, and other nano-scale structures that are fabricated by linking self-assembling peptides to proteins and carbohydrates. Collectively, this review highlights the enormous potential of these approaches to create supramolecular biomaterials with sophisticated functional capabilities that can be finely tuned to meet the needs of downstream applications.
Highlights
Organization of individual molecules into a higher-ordered supramolecular structure, normally referred to as “self-assembly” [1], is a hallmark of living systems that is increasingly being used to fabricate synthetic biomaterials [2,3,4,5,6,7]
Synthetic nanoparticles, nanofibers, and nano-vesicles fabricated via self-assembly can be employed as three-dimensional scaffolds, vehicles, and carriers for diverse applications, including drug delivery, tissue engineering, biosensors, stimuli-responsive materials, and vaccine development [12,15,16,17,18,19,20,21]
This review highlights recent as tags to integrate functional biomolecules, such as peptides, carbohydrates, and proteins, into supramolecular biomaterials
Summary
Organization of individual molecules into a higher-ordered supramolecular structure, normally referred to as “self-assembly” [1], is a hallmark of living systems that is increasingly being used to fabricate synthetic biomaterials [2,3,4,5,6,7]. Folded proteins can catalyze reactions (e.g., enzymes) or recognize ligands (e.g., transmembrane receptors) with specificity and selectivity that are not seen when the same protein is denatured Inspired by these natural examples, significant efforts are focused on designing synthetic molecules, such as peptides, peptoids, oligomers, and polymers that can self-assemble into nano-scale structures with different morphologies (Figure 1) [11,12,13,14]. Β-sheet fibrillizing peptides can assemble into diverse and spheres [35,36,37,38,39] Building upon these advances in self-assembled material science, it is nanostructures, including tubes, fibers, and spheres [35,36,37,38,39]. This review highlights recent as tags to integrate functional biomolecules, such as peptides, carbohydrates, and proteins, into supramolecular biomaterials
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