title: Self-complementary peptides for the formation of collagen-like triple helical supramolecules.
abstract: Collagen is acknowledged as one of the most prominent biomaterials on account of its high biocompatibility and biostability. The development of artificial collagens to replace the animal-derived collagens presents a challenge in the formation of safer and highly functionalized biomaterials. Here, a novel peptide-based system for obtaining collagen-like supramolecules via a spontaneous self-assembling process is described. The designed collagen-like peptides are self-complementary trimers in which each of the 24-mer peptide strands is tethered by two cystine knots forming a staggered arrangement. Their self-assembling ability in aqueous solution was analyzed by circular dichroism, ultrafiltration, and laser diffraction particle size estimation. The obtained results indicate that the staggered trimers form large supramolecular architectures through intermolecular triple helix-formation.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Pharmaceutical Science, Niigata University of Pharmacy and Applied Life Sciences, Niigata 950-2081, Japan. koi@niigata-pharm.ac.jp
authors.forename: Takaki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Koide
authors.forename: Daisuke L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Homma
authors.forename: Shinichi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Asada
authors.forename: Kouki
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kitagawa
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D003094:Collagen / Q000138:chemical synthesis* / Q000737:chemistry; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010455:Peptides / Q000138:chemical synthesis* / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D010455:Peptides; D003094:Collagen