title: A tail of two peptide amphiphiles: effect of conjugation with hydrophobic polymer on folding of peptide sequences.
abstract: Peptide amphiphiles (PA) offer the potential of incorporating biological function into synthetic materials for tissue engineering in regenerative medicine. These hybrid conjugates are known to undergo self-assembly starting from single molecules to nanofibers before turning into hydrogel scaffolds-such a process involves conformational changes in secondary structures of peptides. Therefore, insights on the ability of peptide amphiphiles to form secondary structure as single molecules are useful for understanding self-assembly behavior. We report here a molecular simulation study of peptide folding by two PA sequences, each contains an alkyl tail and short peptide segment. The alkyl tail is observed to play two opposing roles in modulating sequence-dependent folding kinetics and thermodynamics. On one hand, it restricts conformational freedom reducing the entropic cost of folding, which is thus promoted. On the other hand, it acts as an interaction site with nonpolar peptide residues, blocking the peptide from helix nucleation, which reduces folding.
authors: Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of California, Irvine , Irvine, California 92697, United States.
authors: Brian K
authors: BK
authors: Chu
authors: Iris W
authors: IW
authors: Fu
authors: Cade B
authors: CB
authors: Markegard
authors: Seong E
authors: SE
authors: Choi
authors: Hung D
authors: HD
authors: Nguyen
mesh_terms: D056004:Molecular Dynamics Simulation; D057139:Nanofibers / Q000737:chemistry*; D010455:Peptides / Q000737:chemistry*; D017510:Protein Folding; D017433:Protein Structure, Secondary
chemical_list: D010455:Peptides