State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering, School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, P. R. China.
Tianjin Key Laboratory of Membrane Science and Desalination Technology, Tianjin 300072, P. R. China.
Langmuir. 2022 Nov 22;38(46):14261-14268. doi: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.2c02298. Epub 2022 Nov 11.
Short peptides could be used as chiral motifs to self-assemble into various artificial nanostructures with supramolecular or nanoscale chirality, but their applications still need to be expanded. Here, under the mediation of metal ions, the ferrocene-diphenylalanine (Fc-FF) peptide can self-assemble into various chiral nanostructures, including right-handed helical microflowers mediated by Cu, left-handed nanofibers mediated by Ag, and right-handed nanofibers mediated by Zn and Cd. Meanwhile, the gold nanoparticles could be mineralized and deposited on Cu/Fc-FF microflowers to form AuNPs@Cu/Fc-FF, which showed significantly improved catalytic activity. The Ag could be further mineralized on the peptide nanofibers to form AgNPs@Fc-FF, showing an excellent antibacterial effect. Overall, this study provides new insights into the chiral self-assembly of short peptides and demonstrates that the chiral peptide-metal assemblies may have broad prospects in the fields of biocatalysis and antimicrobials.
短肽可用作手性基元，通过自组装形成具有超分子或纳米尺度手性的各种人工纳米结构，但它们的应用仍有待扩展。在这里，在金属离子的介导下，二茂铁-苯丙氨酸（Fc-FF）肽可以自组装成各种手性纳米结构，包括 Cu 介导的右手螺旋微花、Ag 介导的左手纳米纤维以及 Zn 和 Cd 介导的右手纳米纤维。同时，金纳米粒子可以在 Cu/Fc-FF 微花上矿化和沉积，形成 AuNPs@Cu/Fc-FF，其表现出显著提高的催化活性。Ag 可以进一步在肽纳米纤维上矿化，形成 AgNPs@Fc-FF，表现出优异的抗菌效果。总的来说，本研究为短肽的手性自组装提供了新的见解，并表明手性肽-金属组装物在生物催化和抗菌领域可能具有广阔的前景。
