3B's Research Group-Biomaterials, Biodegradables and Biomimetics, University of Minho, Headquarters of the European Institute of Excellence on Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine, Guimarães, Portugal; ICVS/3B's-PT Government Associate Laboratory, Braga/Guimarães, Portugal.
Wiley Interdiscip Rev Nanomed Nanobiotechnol. 2013 Nov-Dec;5(6):582-612. doi: 10.1002/wnan.1238. Epub 2013 Aug 8.
Self-assembly is a ubiquitous process in biology where it plays numerous important roles and underlies the formation of a wide variety of complex biological structures. Over the past two decades, materials scientists have aspired to exploit nature's assembly principles to create artificial materials, with hierarchical structures and tailored properties, for the fabrication of functional devices. Toward this goal, both biological and synthetic building blocks have been subject of extensive research in self-assembly. In fact, molecular self-assembly is becoming increasingly important for the fabrication of biomaterials because it offers a great platform for constructing materials with high level of precision and complexity, integrating order and dynamics, to achieve functions such as stimuli-responsiveness, adaptation, recognition, transport, and catalysis. The importance of peptide self-assembling building blocks has been recognized in the last years, as demonstrated by the literature available on the topic. The simple structure of peptides, as well as their facile synthesis, makes peptides an excellent family of structural units for the bottom-up fabrication of complex nanobiomaterials. Additionally, peptides offer a great diversity of biochemical (specificity, intrinsic bioactivity, biodegradability) and physical (small size, conformation) properties to form self-assembled structures with different molecular configurations. The motivation of this review is to provide an overview on the design principles for peptide self-assembly and to illustrate how these principles have been applied to manipulate their self-assembly across the scales. Applications of self-assembling peptides as nanobiomaterials, including carriers for drug delivery, hydrogels for cell culture and tissue repair are also described.
自组装是生物学中普遍存在的过程，它在许多重要的角色中发挥作用，并为各种复杂生物结构的形成奠定了基础。在过去的二十年中，材料科学家一直渴望利用自然的组装原理来创造具有层次结构和定制特性的人工材料，以制造功能器件。为此，生物和合成构建块一直是自组装的广泛研究对象。事实上，分子自组装在生物材料的制造中变得越来越重要，因为它为构建具有高精度和复杂性的材料提供了一个很好的平台，将有序性和动态性结合起来，实现了刺激响应、适应、识别、传输和催化等功能。肽自组装构建块的重要性在近年来得到了认可，这可以从相关文献中得到证明。肽的结构简单，合成容易，使其成为复杂纳米生物材料自下而上制造的理想结构单元家族。此外，肽提供了广泛的生化（特异性、固有生物活性、可生物降解性）和物理（小尺寸、构象）特性，可形成具有不同分子构型的自组装结构。本综述的目的是提供肽自组装设计原则的概述，并说明如何将这些原则应用于操纵其自组装跨越不同尺度。自组装肽作为纳米生物材料的应用，包括药物传递载体、细胞培养和组织修复用水凝胶也进行了描述。
