Self-Organization of a Chiral D-EAK16 Designer Peptide into a 3D Nanofiber Scaffold

✍ Scribed by Zhongli Luo; Xiaojun Zhao; Shuguang Zhang

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 568 KB
• Volume: 8
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1616-5187
• DOI: 10.1002/mabi.200800003

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Self‐assembling peptide nanofiber scaffolds are an excellent material for applications such as tissue repair, tissue regeneration, instant stopping of bleeding, and slow drug release. We report a new self‐assembling peptide D‐EAK16 consisting purely of D‐amino acids. D‐EAK16 and L‐EAK16 display mirror‐image CD spectra at 20 °C. Like L‐EAK16, D‐EAK16 self‐assembles into nanofibers, thus demonstrating that chiral self‐assembling peptide nanofiber scaffolds can be made from both L‐ and D‐amino acids. We also show that D‐peptide nanofibers are resistant to natural proteases and may thus be useful in biotechnology, nanobiotechnology, tissue repair and tissue regeneration as well as other medical applications.

magnified image