Wychowaniec, J.K., Smith, A.M., Ligorio, C. et al. (3 more authors) (2020) Role of sheet-edge interactions in β-sheet self-assembling peptide hydrogels. Biomacromolecules, 21 (6). pp. 2285-2297. ISSN 1525-7797
Abstract
Hydrogels’ hydrated fibrillar nature makes them the material of choice for the design and engineering of 3D scaffolds for cell culture, tissue engineering, and drug-delivery applications. One particular class of hydrogels which has been the focus of significant research is self-assembling peptide hydrogels. In the present work, we were interested in exploring how fiber–fiber edge interactions affect the self-assembly and gelation properties of amphipathic peptides. For this purpose, we investigated two β-sheet-forming peptides, FEFKFEFK (F8) and KFEFKFEFKK (KF8K), the latter one having the fiber edges covered by lysine residues. Our results showed that the addition of the two lysine residues did not affect the ability of the peptides to form β-sheet-rich fibers, provided that the overall charge carried by the two peptides was kept constant. However, it did significantly reduce edge-driven hydrophobic fiber–fiber associative interactions, resulting in reduced tendency for KF8K fibers to associate/aggregate laterally and form large fiber bundles and consequently network cross-links. This effect resulted in the formation of hydrogels with lower moduli but faster dynamics. As a result, KF8K fibers could be aligned only under high shear and at high concentration while F8 hydrogel fibers were found to align readily at low shear and low concentration. In addition, F8 hydrogels were found to fragment at high concentration because of the high aggregation state stabilizing the fiber bundles, resulting in fiber breakage rather than disentanglement and alignment.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 American Chemical Society. This is an open access article published under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License, (http://pubs.acs.org/page/policy/authorchoice_ccby_termsofuse.html) which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the author and source are cited. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Chemistry (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 24 Jun 2020 15:28 |
Last Modified: | 24 Jun 2020 15:28 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | American Chemical Society (ACS) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1021/acs.biomac.0c00229 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:162038 |