title: Building Nanowires from Micelles: Hierarchical Self-Assembly of Alternating Amphiphilic Glycopolypeptide Brushes with Pendants of High-Mannose Glycodendron and Oligophenylalanine.
abstract: Mimicking the diverse glyco-conjugate structures in nature is always the dream of scientists. Right now, hierarchical self-assembled structures of natural conjugates of peptides and sugars could not easily be achieved via linear glycopolypeptide with monosaccharides as attachments. In this work, by using a series of well-designed alternating amphiphilic glycopolypeptide brushes (AAGBs) with pendants of glycodendrons and short peptides, various self-assembled morphologies were achieved, including nanowires, nanoribbon, and compound micelles mainly depending on the number ratio of the sugar units to the amino acids species (S/F). Among these morphologies, nanowire attracted our great attention. TEM studies demonstrated that it is formed via a hierarchical self-assembly, i.e., a series of successive processes, including micellization, micelles alignment forming nanofilament, branching of the nanofilaments by micelles, and finally nanowire formation. As far as we know, such hierarchical self-assembly process with high complexity has not been observed in literature for glycopolypeptides even polypeptides, which will deepen our understanding on self-assembly mechanism of natural glyco-conjugates and expand the library of biomimetic materials.
authors.affiliation: The State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers and Department of Macromolecular Science, Fudan University , Shanghai 200433, China.
authors.forename: Yijiang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: The State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers and Department of Macromolecular Science, Fudan University , Shanghai 200433, China.
authors.forename: Yufei
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: The State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers and Department of Macromolecular Science, Fudan University , Shanghai 200433, China.
authors.forename: Zheyu
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: The State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers and Department of Macromolecular Science, Fudan University , Shanghai 200433, China.
authors.forename: Jue
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: The State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers and Department of Macromolecular Science, Fudan University , Shanghai 200433, China.
authors.forename: Kongchang
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.affiliation: The State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers and Department of Macromolecular Science, Fudan University , Shanghai 200433, China.
authors.forename: Guosong
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: The State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers and Department of Macromolecular Science, Fudan University , Shanghai 200433, China.
authors.forename: Ming
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Jiang
mesh_terms: D006020:Glycopeptides / Q000737:chemistry*; D008358:Mannose / Q000737:chemistry*; D008823:Micelles; D008958:Models, Molecular; D015394:Molecular Structure; D053770:Nanowires; D013501:Surface-Active Agents / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D006020:Glycopeptides; D008823:Micelles; D013501:Surface-Active Agents; D008358:Mannose