Design of Polypeptides Self-Assembling into Antifouling Coatings: Exploiting Multivalency.

We propose to exploit multivalent binding of solid-binding peptides (SBPs) for the physical attachment of antifouling polypeptide brushes on solid surfaces. Using a silica-binding peptide as a model SBP, we find that both tandem-repeated SBPs and SBPs repeated in branched architectures implemented via a multimerization domain work very well to improve the binding strength of polypeptide brushes, as compared to earlier designs with a single SBP. At the same time, for many of the designed sequences, either the solubility or the yield of recombinant production is low. For a single design, with the domain structure --, both solubility and yield of recombinant production were high. In this design, is a silica-binding peptide, is a highly thermostable, de novo-designed trimerization domain, and is a hydrophilic elastin-like polypeptide. We show that the -- triblock polypeptide rapidly assembles into highly stable polypeptide brushes on silica surfaces, with excellent antifouling properties against high concentrations of serum albumin. Given that SBPs attaching to a wide range of materials have been identified, the -- triblock design provides a template for the development of polypeptides for coating many other materials such as metals or plastics.