Peptoids are a class of non-natural biopolymer based on an N-substituted glycine backbone that are ideally suited to access protein-mimetic materials.  Peptoid materials bridge a great materials gap between proteins and bulk polymers.  Like proteins, peptoids are a sequence-specific heteropolymer, capable of folding into specific shapes and exhibiting potent biological activities; and like bulk polymers they are chemically and biologically stable and relatively cheap to make.  Peptoids are efficiently assembled via automated solid-phase synthesis from hundreds of chemically diverse building blocks (primary amines) allowing the rapid generation of huge combinatorial libraries.  Computational tools are also being developed which aid the prediction of chain folding.  This provides an ideal platform to discover nanostructured materials capable of protein-like structure and function.  We have designed a series of amphiphilic peptoid 36mers of specific sequence that self assemble into extremely thin (3 nm) crystalline sheets in aqueous solution.  Because of their atomically-defined polar surface, the nanosheets serve as an excellent platform to design chem/bio sensors capable of specific molecular recognition.

Protein mimetic nanostructures from sequence-specific peptoid polymers

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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