Recent advances in the fabrication and bio-medical applications of self-assembled dipeptide nanostructures

Nanomedicine ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-163
Author(s):  
Sonika Chibh ◽  
Jibanananda Mishra ◽  
Avneet Kour ◽  
Virander S Chauhan ◽  
Jiban J Panda

Molecular self-assembly is a widespread natural phenomenon and has inspired several researchers to synthesize a compendium of nano/microstructures with widespread applications. Biomolecules like proteins, peptides and lipids are used as building blocks to fabricate various nanomaterials. Supramolecular peptide self-assembly continue to play a significant role in forming diverse nanostructures with numerous biomedical applications; however, dipeptides offer distinctive supremacy in their ability to self-assemble and produce a variety of nanostructures. Though several reviews have articulated the progress in the field of longer peptides or polymers and their self-assembling behavior, there is a paucity of reviews or literature covering the emerging field of dipeptide-based nanostructures. In this review, our goal is to present the recent advancements in dipeptide-based nanostructures with their potential applications.

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 88-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Santu Bera ◽  
Ehud Gazit

The self-assembly of short peptide building blocks into well-ordered nanostructures is a key direction in bionanotechnology. The formation of β -sheet organizations by short peptides is well explored, leading to the development of a wide range of functional assemblies. Likewise, many natural proteinaceous materials, such as silk and amyloid fibrils, are based on β-sheet structures. In contrast, collagen, the most abundant protein in mammals, is based on helical arrangement. Similar to β-sheet structures, short helical peptides have been recently discovered to possess a diverse set of functionalities with the potential to fabricate artificial self-assembling materials. Here, we outline the functional roles of self-assembled nanostructures formed by short helical peptides and their potential as artificial materials. We focus on the association between self-assembled mesoscale structures and their material function and demonstrate the way by which this class of building blocks bears the potential for diverse applications, such as the future fabrication of smart devices.


Entropy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. 877
Author(s):  
Brunno C. Rocha ◽  
Sanjib Paul ◽  
Harish Vashisth

Entropy plays a key role in the self-assembly of colloidal particles. Specifically, in the case of hard particles, which do not interact or overlap with each other during the process of self-assembly, the free energy is minimized due to an increase in the entropy of the system. Understanding the contribution of entropy and engineering it is increasingly becoming central to modern colloidal self-assembly research, because the entropy serves as a guide to design a wide variety of self-assembled structures for many technological and biomedical applications. In this work, we highlight the importance of entropy in different theoretical and experimental self-assembly studies. We discuss the role of shape entropy and depletion interactions in colloidal self-assembly. We also highlight the effect of entropy in the formation of open and closed crystalline structures, as well as describe recent advances in engineering entropy to achieve targeted self-assembled structures.


2013 ◽  
Vol 754 ◽  
pp. 109-119
Author(s):  
Mohammad A. Jafar Mazumder

Nanoparticles are the cutting edge of the rapidly developing field of nanotechnology, which enables visualization and manipulation of matter down to the atomic level. Their unique size to volume ratio, shape and thermal stability make these materials superior, and rapidly usable in various bio-medical applications. This brief review summarize the recent advances in the field of applied nanomaterials with an emphasis in designing nanoscale devices with pre-defined structure, and their potential applications in the field of biology and medicine.


2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hueyling Tan

Molecular self-assembly is ubiquitous in nature and has emerged as a new approach to produce new materials in chemistry, engineering, nanotechnology, polymer science and materials. Molecular self-assembly has been attracting increasing interest from the scientific community in recent years due to its importance in understanding biology and a variety of diseases at the molecular level. In the last few years, considerable advances have been made in the use ofpeptides as building blocks to produce biological materials for wide range of applications, including fabricating novel supra-molecular structures and scaffolding for tissue repair. The study ofbiological self-assembly systems represents a significant advancement in molecular engineering and is a rapidly growing scientific and engineering field that crosses the boundaries ofexisting disciplines. Many self-assembling systems are rangefrom bi- andtri-block copolymers to DNA structures as well as simple and complex proteins andpeptides. The ultimate goal is to harness molecular self-assembly such that design andcontrol ofbottom-up processes is achieved thereby enabling exploitation of structures developed at the meso- and macro-scopic scale for the purposes oflife and non-life science applications. Such aspirations can be achievedthrough understanding thefundamental principles behind the selforganisation and self-synthesis processes exhibited by biological systems.


Soft Matter ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiawei Lu ◽  
Xiangyu Bu ◽  
Xinghua Zhang ◽  
Bing Liu

The shapes of colloidal particles are crucial to the self-assembled superstructures. Understanding the relationship between the shapes of building blocks and the resulting crystal structures is an important fundamental question....


Pharmaceutics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucia Lombardi ◽  
Annarita Falanga ◽  
Valentina Del Genio ◽  
Stefania Galdiero

Peptide drugs hold great promise for the treatment of infectious diseases thanks to their novel mechanisms of action, low toxicity, high specificity, and ease of synthesis and modification. Naturally developing self-assembly in nature has inspired remarkable interest in self-assembly of peptides to functional nanomaterials. As a matter of fact, their structural, mechanical, and functional advantages, plus their high bio-compatibility and bio-degradability make them excellent candidates for facilitating biomedical applications. This review focuses on the self-assembly of peptides for the fabrication of antibacterial nanomaterials holding great interest for substituting antibiotics, with emphasis on strategies to achieve nano-architectures of self-assembly. The antibacterial activities achieved by these nanomaterials are also described.


2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Smith ◽  
Verena Schüller ◽  
Carsten Forthmann ◽  
Robert Schreiber ◽  
Philip Tinnefeld ◽  
...  

Nanometer-sized polyhedral wire-frame objects hold a wide range of potential applications both as structural scaffolds as well as a basis for synthetic nanocontainers. The utilization of DNA as basic building blocks for such structures allows the exploitation of bottom-up self-assembly in order to achieve molecular programmability through the pairing of complementary bases. In this work, we report on a hollow but rigid tetrahedron framework of 75 nm strut length constructed with the DNA origami method. Flexible hinges at each of their four joints provide a means for structural variability of the object. Through the opening of gaps along the struts, four variants can be created as confirmed by both gel electrophoresis and direct imaging techniques. The intrinsic site addressability provided by this technique allows the unique targeted attachment of dye and/or linker molecules at any point on the structure's surface, which we prove through the superresolution fluorescence microscopy technique DNA PAINT.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (31) ◽  
pp. 6739-6752
Author(s):  
Kaiqi Long ◽  
Yuwei Liu ◽  
Yafei Li ◽  
Weiping Wang

This review introduces trigonal building blocks and summarizes their structural characteristics, self-assembly ability and biomedical applications.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (80) ◽  
pp. 20120740 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tais A. P. F. Doll ◽  
Senthilkumar Raman ◽  
Raja Dey ◽  
Peter Burkhard

Nanoscale assemblies are a unique class of materials, which can be synthesized from inorganic, polymeric or biological building blocks. The multitude of applications of this class of materials ranges from solar and electrical to uses in food, cosmetics and medicine. In this review, we initially highlight characteristic features of polymeric nanoscale assemblies as well as those built from biological units (lipids, nucleic acids and proteins). We give special consideration to protein nanoassemblies found in nature such as ferritin protein cages, bacterial microcompartments and vaults found in eukaryotic cells and designed protein nanoassemblies, such as peptide nanofibres and peptide nanotubes. Next, we focus on biomedical applications of these nanoscale assemblies, such as cell targeting, drug delivery, bioimaging and vaccine development. In the vaccine development section, we report in more detail the use of virus-like particles and self-assembling polypeptide nanoparticles as new vaccine delivery platforms.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Garima Thakur ◽  
Kovur Prashanthi ◽  
Thomas Thundat

ABSTRACTSelf–assembly of molecular building blocks provides an interesting route to produce well-defined chemical structures. Tailoring the functionalities on the building blocks and controlling the time of self-assembly could control the properties as well as the structure of the resultant patterns. Spontaneous self-assembly of biomolecules can generate bio-interfaces for myriad of potential applications. Here we report self-assembled patterning of human serum albumin (HSA) protein in to ring structures on a polyethylene glycol (PEG) modified gold surface. The structure of the self-assembled protein molecules and kinetics of structure formation entirely revolved around controlling the nucleation of the base layer. The formation of different sizes of ring patterns is attributed to growth conditions of the PEG islands for bio-conjugation. These assemblies might be beneficial in forming structurally ordered architectures of active proteins such as HSA or other globular proteins.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document