Tanaka Naoki, Suyama Keitaro, Tomohara Keisuke, Maeda Iori, Nose Takeru
Department of Chemistry, Faculty and Graduate School of Science, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
Faculty of Arts and Science, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
J Pept Sci. 2023 Feb;29(2):e3449. doi: 10.1002/psc.3449. Epub 2022 Sep 9.
Elastin-like peptides (ELPs) exhibit a reversible phase transition, known as coacervation, triggered by temperature changes. This property makes them useful as stimuli-responsive molecular materials for various applications. Among ELPs, short peptide chain lengths have some advantages over long peptide chain lengths because short ELPs can be easily obtained by chemical synthesis, allowing the use of various amino acids, including D-type and unnatural amino acids, at any position in the sequence. Moreover, the incorporated amino acids readily affect the temperature-responsive behavior of ELPs. However, to be utilized in various applications, it is necessary to develop short ELPs and to investigate their temperature-responsive properties. To obtain further insights into the temperature-responsive behavior of the short ELPs, we investigated branched short ELP analogs composed of (FPGVG) chains (n = 1 or 2, abbreviated as F1 and F2, respectively). We synthesized multimers composed of four F1 chains or two to four F2 chains using ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) as a central component of multimerization. Our results show that the multimers obtained exhibited coacervation in aqueous solutions whereas linear F1 or F2 did not. Furthermore, the structural features of the obtained multimers were the same as those of linear (FPGVG) . In this study, we demonstrated that molecules capable of coacervation can be obtained by multimerization of F1 or F2. The temperature-responsive molecules obtained using short ELPs make it possible to use them as easy-to-synthesize peptide tags to confer temperature responsiveness to various molecules, which will aid the development of temperature-responsive biomaterials with a wide variety of functions.
弹性蛋白样肽（ELP）表现出一种由温度变化引发的可逆相变，即凝聚。这一特性使其成为适用于各种应用的刺激响应性分子材料。在ELP中，短肽链长度比长肽链长度具有一些优势，因为短ELP可以通过化学合成轻松获得，从而能够在序列的任何位置使用包括D型和非天然氨基酸在内的各种氨基酸。此外，掺入的氨基酸很容易影响ELP的温度响应行为。然而，为了在各种应用中得到利用，有必要开发短ELP并研究它们的温度响应特性。为了进一步深入了解短ELP的温度响应行为，我们研究了由（FPGVG）链组成的分支短ELP类似物（n = 1或2，分别简称为F1和F2）。我们使用乙二胺四乙酸（EDTA）作为多聚化的核心成分，合成了由四条F1链或两条至四条F2链组成的多聚体。我们的结果表明，所获得的多聚体在水溶液中表现出凝聚现象，而线性F1或F2则没有。此外，所获得的多聚体的结构特征与线性（FPGVG）相同。在本研究中，我们证明了通过F1或F2的多聚化可以获得能够发生凝聚的分子。使用短ELP获得的温度响应性分子使得将它们用作易于合成的肽标签成为可能，从而赋予各种分子温度响应性，这将有助于开发具有多种功能的温度响应性生物材料。
