Biomolecules for Non-biological Things: Materials Construction through Peptide Design and Solution Assembly

When using peptides in a self-assembly process, one can take advantage of biomolecular attributes; such as intramolecular folding and secondary structure; in addition to more traditional self-assembling molecular attributes; such as amphiphilicty, hydrogen bonding and electrostatic interactions; to define hierarchical material structure. Furthermore, different self-assembly pathways can be utilized to reproducibly form different nanostructures with the same molecule design. While biomimicry is a powerful guide by which to design new molecules, computational design of new peptides for assembly allows the construction of non-natural, potentially arbitrary structures as well as the use of non-natural chemical functionality within the molecule design targets. A new solution assembled system comprised of coiled coil motifs will be introduced. Depending on the chemical functionality displayed on the exterior of the designed coiled coil bundles, the bundles either remain individually suspended in solution, assemble into 1-d chains, or assemble into 2-D nanomaterials with a desired interbundle packing symmetry, respectively. New peptide building blocks with covalent interactions produce one-dimensional chains and liquid crystalline matter and will be discussed.