Self-Assembled Peptidic Nanostructures

Molecular recognition in biology requires appropriate
conformational presentation of ligands and receptor
binding sites. There has been great interest in
design of materials with biological epitopes that can
induce cellular events important in tissue
regeneration. The use of self-assembly is
particularly attractive because it can allow
biomolecular scaffold formation in situ by delivering
liquids containing the self-assembling molecules to a target tissue site. This book explores self-
assembling peptide amphiphiles (PA) with various
functional groups that assemble to form nanofiber
networks in physiological media. The PA molecules
were designed with a branched architecture to enhance
recognition of bioactive epitopes on the surfaces of
nanofibers. Biotinylated model branched PA systems
for recognition of biotin by avidin on the periphery
of the nanofibers were studied and the branched
architecture enhanced the recognition of biotin by
avidin possibly by changing the packing density of
molecules in the nanofibers. Various PA molecules
were synthesized with branched architectures for
enhanced recognition of biological signals for
cellular adhesion.

Autorentext
Dr. Guler is working at Bilkent University, UNAM-Institute of Materials Science and Nanotechnology as a faculty. He received Ph.D. degree in chemistry from Northwestern University in 2006 and he had worked at the Institute for Bionanotechnology in Medicine at Northwestern University and Nanotope Inc. in Chicago,IL USA.

Klappentext
Molecular recognition in biology requires appropriate conformational presentation of ligands and receptor binding sites. There has been great interest in design of materials with biological epitopes that can induce cellular events important in tissue regeneration. The use of self-assembly is particularly attractive because it can allow biomolecular scaffold formation in situ by delivering liquids containing the self-assembling molecules to a target tissue site. This book explores self-assembling peptide amphiphiles (PA) with various functional groups that assemble to form nanofiber networks in physiological media. The PA molecules were designed with a branched architecture to enhance recognition of bioactive epitopes on the surfaces of nanofibers. Biotinylated model branched PA systems for recognition of biotin by avidin on the periphery of the nanofibers were studied and the branched architecture enhanced the recognition of biotin by avidin possibly by changing the packing density of molecules in the nanofibers. Various PA molecules were synthesized with branched architectures for enhanced recognition of biological signals for cellular adhesion.