Nanomechanical Stimulus Accelerates and Directs the Self-Assembly of Silk-Elastin-like Nanofibers

One-dimensional nanostructures are ideal building blocks for functional nanoscale assembly. Peptide-based nanofibers have great potential in building smart hierarchical structures due to their tunable structures at the single residue level and their ability to reconfigure themselves in response to e...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the American Chemical Society 2011-02, Vol.133 (6), p.1745-1747
Main Authors: Chang, Jonathan, Peng, Xiu-Feng, Hijji, Karam, Cappello, Joseph, Ghandehari, Hamidreza, Solares, Santiago D., Seog, Joonil
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amino Acid Sequence
Animals
Biomimetic Materials - chemistry
Elastin - chemistry
Kinetics
Mechanical Phenomena
Microscopy, Atomic Force
Molecular Sequence Data
Nanofibers - chemistry
Nanotechnology - methods
Peptide Fragments - chemistry
Silk - chemistry
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Summary:One-dimensional nanostructures are ideal building blocks for functional nanoscale assembly. Peptide-based nanofibers have great potential in building smart hierarchical structures due to their tunable structures at the single residue level and their ability to reconfigure themselves in response to environmental stimuli. We observed that pre-adsorbed silk-elastin-based protein polymers self-assemble into nanofibers through conformational changes on a mica substrate. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the rate of self-assembly was significantly enhanced by applying a nanomechanical stimulus using atomic force microscopy. The orientation of the newly grown nanofibers was mostly perpendicular to the scanning direction, implying that the new fiber assembly was locally activated with directional control. Our method provides a novel way to prepare nanofiber patterned substrates using a bottom-up approach.
ISSN:0002-7863
1520-5126
DOI:10.1021/ja110191f