Solution-assembled materials possible with peptides range from hydrogels for biomaterials to nanostructures with defined morphology and chemistry display for inorganic materials templating.  Hydrogels, inorganic-peptide hybrid materials and nanostructure manipulation will be discussed.  The local nano- and overall network structure, and resultant viscoelastic and cell-level biological properties, of hydrogels that are formed via beta-hairpin self-assembly will be presented.  These peptide hydrogels are potentially excellent scaffolds for tissue repair and regeneration due to inherent cytocompatibility, porous morphology, and shear-thinning but instant recovery viscoelastic properties. Slight design variations of the peptide sequence allow for tunability of the self-assembly/hydrogelation kinetics as well as the tunability of the local nanostructure and hierarchical network structure. During assembly and gelation, desired components can be encapsulated within the hydrogel network such as drug compounds and/or living cells.  Importantly, once formed into a solid, self-supporting gel the network can be disrupted by the introduction of a shear stress.  The system can shear thin but immediately reheal to preshear stiffness on the cessation of the shear stress.  This shear thinning behavior of these physical networks makes them interesting candidates for injectable delivery in vivo where no post injection chemistry is required to set up the network. In addition, peptide fibrils can be used to template the growth of inorganic materials as well as the assembly of inorganic nanoparticles. Both long polypeptides, synthesized through recombinant techniques, as well as short peptides have also been designed for fibrillar assembly.  On forming fibrils, the long polypeptides display chemistry at desired distances along the fibrils, thus allowing desired inorganic particle assembly with great fidelity.  Short, beta-hairpin peptides can be used in the gel state to template the growth of inorganic sol-gel phases on the surface of the fibrils or can be used to template inorganic nanoparticle assembly with excellent precision.

Material control through peptide design and solution assembly: Hydrogels to hybrids

246th National Meeting (2013)

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