Single-molecule insights into surface-mediated homochirality in hierarchical peptide assembly

Homochirality is very important in the formation of advanced biological structures, but the origin and evolution mechanisms of homochiral biological structures in complex hierarchical process is not clear at the single-molecule level. Here we demonstrate the single-molecule investigation of biological homochirality in the hierarchical peptide assembly, regarding symmetry break, chirality amplification, and chirality transmission. We find that homochirality can be triggered by the chirality unbalance of two adsorption configuration monomers. Co-assembly between these two adsorption configuration monomers is very critical for the formation of homochiral assemblies. The site-specific recognition is responsible for the subsequent homochirality amplification and transmission in their hierarchical assembly. These single-molecule insights open up inspired thoughts for understanding biological homochirality and have general implications for designing and fabricating artificial biomimetic hierarchical chiral materials.