title: Wormlike micelle formation in peptide-lipid conjugates driven by secondary structure transformation of the headgroups.
abstract: Wormlike micelles are assemblies of amphiphilic molecules of intermediate mean curvature between spherical micelles and flat bilayer membranes, which often form in solutions of peptide amphiphiles (hydrophilic peptide modules conjugated to hydrophobic subunits). In an effort to better understand the factors controlling peptide amphiphile (PA) micellar shape, we synthetically linked a short peptide with an alpha-helix-forming tendency to a hexadecyl tail. These molecules initially dissolve as spherical micelles, which can persist for hours or days, followed by transformation to wormlike micelles, which occurs simultaneously with a transition in the secondary structure of the headgroup peptides to beta-sheet. This observation provides evidence that the extended micelle is the thermodynamically favored state sought by PA micelles in the process of forming beta-sheet structures among the head-groups, though they are not the structures formed during the initial kinetics of assembly.
authors: Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.
authors: Tomoko
authors: T
authors: Shimada
authors: Sangwoo
authors: S
authors: Lee
authors: Frank S
authors: FS
authors: Bates
authors: Atsushi
authors: A
authors: Hotta
authors: Matthew
authors: M
authors: Tirrell
mesh_terms: D002942:Circular Dichroism; D008055:Lipids / Q000737:chemistry*; D008823:Micelles; D010455:Peptides / Q000737:chemistry*; D017433:Protein Structure, Secondary; D013816:Thermodynamics
chemical_list: D008055:Lipids; D008823:Micelles; D010455:Peptides