Polypeptide templating for designer hierarchical materials
Name
s41467-019-14257-0.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
3.67 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
072fad2b17f8f1183417ea1c04f11307
Author(s)
Sun, Hui
Marelli, Benedetto
Date Issued
January 2020
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Sun, Hui and Benedetto Marelli. "Polypeptide templating for designer hierarchical materials." Nature Communicatons 11, 1 (January 2020): 351 © 2020 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Despite advances in directing the assembly of biomacromolecules into well-defined nanostructures, leveraging pathway complexity of molecular disorder to order transition while bridging materials fabrication from nano- to macroscale remains a challenge. Here, we present templated crystallization of structural proteins to nanofabricate hierarchically structured materials up to centimeter scale, using silk fibroin as an example. The process involves the use of ordered peptide supramolecular assemblies as templates to direct the folding and assembly of silk fibroin into nanofibrillar structures. Silk polymorphs can be engineered by varying the peptide seeds used. Modulation of the relative concentration between silk fibroin and peptide seeds, silk fibroin molecular weight and pH allows control over nanofibrils morphologies and mechanical properties. Finally, facile integration of the bottom-up templated crystallization with emerging top-down techniques enables the generation of macroscopic nanostructured materials with potential applications in information storage/encryption, surface functionalization, and printable three-dimensional constructs of customized architecture and controlled anisotropy.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-14257-0
