Staff profile
Publication details for Dr Elizabeth Bromley
Papapostolou, D, Bromley, EHC, Bano, C & Woolfson, DN (2008). Electrostatic control of thickness and stiffness in a designed protein fiber. Journal Of The American Chemical Society 130(15): 5124-5130.- Publication type: Journal papers: academic
- ISSN/ISBN: 0002-7863, 1520-5126
- DOI: 10.1021/ja0778444
- View online: Online version
Author(s) from Durham
Abstract
Attempts to design peptide-based fibers from first principles test our
understanding of protein folding and assembly, and potentially provide
routes to new biomaterials. Several groups have presented such designs
based on a-helical and beta-strand building blocks. A key issue is this
area now is engineering and controlling fiber morphology and related
properties. Previously, we have reported the design and
characterization of a self-assembling peptide fiber (SAF) system based
on a-helical coiled-coil building blocks. With preceding designs, the
SAFs are thickened, highly ordered structures in which many coiled
coils are tightly bundled. As a result, the fibers behave as rigid
rods. Here we report successful attempts to design new fibers that are
thinner and more flexible by further programming at the amino-acid
sequence level. This was done by introducing extended, or "smeared",
electrostatic networks of arginine and glutamate residues to the
surfaces of the coiled-coil building blocks. Furthermore, using
arginine-rather than lysine-in these networks plays a major role in the
fiber assembly, presumably by facilitating multidentate intra and
intercoiled-coil salt bridges.