Elementary building blocks of self-assembled peptide nanotubes.
In the world of biology, "self-assembly" is the ability of biological entities to interact with one another to form supramolecular structures. One basic group of self-assembled structures is peptide nanotubes (PNTs). However, the self-assembly mechanism, with its special characteristics, is not yet fully understood. An exceptional quantum-confined approach is shown here for the self-assembly mechanism in bio-inspired materials. We found the elementary building block of the studied PNT, which is self-assembled from short peptides composed of two phenylalanine residues, to be 0D-quantum-confined (can be related to confinement in 3D), also called a quantum dot (QD). This elementary building block can further self-assemble to a PNT formation. It has been observed that the assembly process of dots to tubes and the disassembly process of tubes to dots are reversible. We further show that a similar dipeptide can also self-assemble to a QD-like structure, with different dimensions. The presented peptide QD structures are nanometer-sized structures, with pronounced exciton effects, which may promote the use of an entirely new kind of organic QDs.
Amdursky
Nadav
N
Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology, George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Iby and Aladar Fleischman Faculty of Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel.
Molotskii
Michel
M
Gazit
Ehud
E
Rosenman
Gil
G
D045333:Nanotubes, Peptide / Q000737:chemistry*; D010649:Phenylalanine / Q000737:chemistry*; D045663:Quantum Dots
D045333:Nanotubes, Peptide; D010649:Phenylalanine