Efficient Energy Transfer within Self-Assembling Peptide Fibers: A Route to Light-Harvesting Nanomaterials

Abstract

Small peptides offer an attractive starting point for the development of self-assembling materials for a variety of purposes, since they are relatively simple to produce and can be tailored to provide an expansive range of chemical functionality. We have employed a short peptide that spontaneously self-assembles into a multimolecular fibrillar architecture to drive the coassembly of two independent luminescent moieties. We use fluorescence spectroscopy to demonstrate that the resulting complex performs a light-harvesting function.

Designed amyloid fibers as materials for selective carbon dioxide capture

“…Applications of amyloid fibers have been explored in the fields including conductive nanowires (34), nanostructured protein films (35), light-harvesting nano-device (36,37), and retroviral gene transfer boosting (38). The properties demonstrated here of amyloid fibers for carbon dioxide capture fall short of those needed in a practical material operating in the demanding conditions of water, acid, and temperature of flue gas.…”

Useful synthetic method of polypeptides with well‐defined structure by polymerization of activated urethane derivatives of α‐amino acids

“…N-(phenoxycarbonyl)-BLG (1b) was synthesized by the reaction of BLG with phenyl chloroformate, according to the procedures previously reported. 20 1 H and 13 C NMR spectra were recorded with a JEOL ECS-400 (400 MHz) spectrometer, and chemical shifts were recorded in ppm units using tetremethylsilane as an internal standard. IR spectra were taken with KBr disks on a Nicolet iS10 FT-IR, Thermo Scientific, Japan.…”

“…Therefore, its polymerization system could allow to construct various kinds of polypeptides-based functional materials, including drug delivery, [6][7][8] tissue engineering, 9 surface modification, [10][11][12] and organic electronics. 13,14 Although living polymerization of NCA affords an important advantage in synthesis of well-defined polypeptide, the susceptive nature of NCA for moisture and heating is major drawbacks for its production toward practical use. Thus, development of alternative procedure for polypeptide synthesis is a great challenge in this research area.…”

Organic Fluorescent Nanofibers and Sub-Micrometer Rods

“…Generally, the sensing performance is improved by the extended effective surface area of the nanofibers. These structures could also play the role of antennae in light-harvesting nanomaterials (Channon et al, 2009;Channon et al, 2009;Desvergne et al, 2006). More simply, nanofibers can also be stamped onto precious documents, such as banknotes, where they form a blue-light emitting mark, which appears more brilliant when seen from the side than from above, due to the particular waveguiding properties of the fibers (Schiek et al, 2008).…”