Huihua Xing, Caleb Wigham, Sieun Ruth Lee, Aramis J Pereira, Luana J de Campos, Agustín S Picco, Cristián Huck-Iriart, Carlos Escudero, Laura Perez-Chirinos, Sandun Gajaweera, Jeffrey Comer, Ivan R Sasselli, Samuel I Stupp, R Helen Zha, Martin Conda-Sheridan
Self-assembled nanostructures such as those formed by peptide amphiphiles (PAs) are of great interest in biological and pharmacological applications. Herein, a simple and widely applicable chemical modification, a urea motif, was included in the PA's molecular structure to stabilize the nanostructures by virtue of intermolecular hydrogen bonds. Since the amino acid residue nearest to the lipid tail is the most relevant for stability, we decided to include the urea modification at that position. We prepared four groups of molecules (13 PAs in all), with varying levels of intermolecular cohesion, using amino acids with distinct β-sheet promoting potential and/or containing hydrophobic tails of distinct lengths...
April 11, 2024: Biomacromolecules