Related Experiment Video

Updated: Oct 29, 2025

Formation of Ordered Biomolecular Structures by the Self-assembly of Short Peptides

Formation of Ordered Biomolecular Structures by the Self-assembly of Short Peptides

Published on: November 21, 2013

Chirality Effects in Peptide Assembly Structures.

Yongfang Zheng¹, Kejing Mao¹, Shixian Chen¹

¹Engineering Research Center of Industrial Biocatalysis, Fujian Province Universities, Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials Oriented Chemical Engineering, Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials, College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, China.

Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology

|July 9, 2021

Summary

Chirality significantly impacts peptide assembly structures, influencing their formation and bioactivity. Understanding these chiral effects aids in designing advanced biomaterials for medical uses.

Area of Science:

Biomaterials Science
Supramolecular Chemistry
Peptide Self-Assembly

Background:

Peptide assembly structures are crucial for developing advanced biomaterials with diverse applications.
Peptides self-organize into ordered supramolecular architectures like fibrils, nanotubes, and vesicles.
Assembly mechanisms are influenced by peptide sequence, amino acid composition, chirality, and environmental factors.

Purpose of the Study:

To review the regulatory effects of chirality alteration on peptide assembly structures.
To explore how chirality influences the structure and bioactivity of linear and cyclic peptide assemblies.
To discuss chiral self-sorting and co-assembly in racemic peptide mixtures.

Main Methods:

Literature review focusing on studies of peptide self-assembly.
Analysis of the impact of chirality on peptide supramolecular structures.
Examination of factors influencing peptide assembly, including sequence and external conditions.

Main Results:

Chirality is a critical determinant of peptide assembly morphology and function.
Alterations in chirality can significantly modify the structural organization and biological activity of peptide assemblies.
Chiral self-sorting and co-assembly offer strategies for controlling the formation of complex peptide structures from racemic mixtures.

Conclusions:

Chirality plays a pivotal role in directing peptide self-assembly and dictates the properties of resulting biomaterials.
Targeted manipulation of chirality provides a powerful tool for designing peptide-based materials with tailored functionalities for biomedical applications.
Further research into chiral phenomena in peptide assembly will advance the field of peptide biomaterials.

Keywords:

bioactivity chirality effects chirality switching co-assembly peptide self-assembly

More Related Videos

Constructing Thioether/Vinyl Sulfide-tethered Helical Peptides Via Photo-induced Thiol-ene/yne Hydrothiolation

Constructing Thioether/Vinyl Sulfide-tethered Helical Peptides Via Photo-induced Thiol-ene/yne Hydrothiolation

Published on: August 1, 2018

Construction and Systematical Symmetric Studies of a Series of Supramolecular Clusters with Binary or Ternary Ammonium Triphenylacetates

Construction and Systematical Symmetric Studies of a Series of Supramolecular Clusters with Binary or Ternary Ammonium Triphenylacetates

Published on: February 15, 2016

Related Concept Videos

Chirality in Nature

Chirality in Nature

Chirality is the most intriguing yet essential facet of nature, governing life’s biochemical processes and precision. It can be observed from a snail shell pattern in a macroscopic world to an amino acid, the minutest building block of life. Most of the snails around the world have right-coiled shells because of the intrinsic chirality in their genes. All the amino acids present in the human body exist in an enantiomerically pure state, except for glycine - the sole achiral amino acid.

Prochirality

Prochirality

The concept of prochirality leads to the nomenclature of the individual faces of a molecule and plays a crucial role in the enantioselective reaction. It is a concept where two or more achiral molecules react to produce chiral products. A typical process is the reaction of an achiral ketone to generate a chiral alcohol. Here, the achiral reactant reacts with an achiral reducing agent, sodium borohydride, to generate an equimolar mixture of the chiral enantiomers of the product. For example, an...

Chirality

Chirality

Chirality is a term that describes the lack of mirror symmetry in an object. In other words, chiral objects cannot be superposed on their mirror images. For example, our feet are chiral, as the mirror image of the left foot, the right foot, cannot be superposed on the left foot.
Chiral objects exhibit a sense of handedness when they interact with another chiral object. For example, our left foot can only fit in the left shoe and not in the right shoe. Achiral objects — objects that have...

Chirality at Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Sulfur

Chirality at Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Sulfur

Chirality is most prevalent in carbon-based tetrahedral compounds, but this important facet of molecular symmetry extends to sp3-hybridized nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur centers, including trivalent molecules with lone pairs. Here, the lone pair behaves as a functional group in addition to the other three substituents to form an analogous tetrahedral center that can be chiral.
A consequence of chirality is the need for enantiomeric resolution. While this is theoretically possible for all...

Molecules with Multiple Chiral Centers

Molecules with Multiple Chiral Centers

Molecules that possess multiple chiral centers can afford a large number of stereoisomers. For instance, while some molecules like 2-butanol have one chiral center, defined as a tetrahedral carbon atom with four different substituents attached, several molecules like butane-2,3-diol have multiple chiral centers. A simple formula to predict the number of stereoisomers possible for a molecule with n chiral centers is 2n. However, there can be a lower number where some of the stereoisomers are...

Stereoisomerism of Cyclic Compounds

Stereoisomerism of Cyclic Compounds

In this lesson, we delve into the role of ring conformation and its stability, which determines the spatial arrangement and, consequently, the molecular symmetry and stereoisomerism of cyclic compounds. 1,2-Dimethylcyclohexane is used as a case study to evaluate the possible number of stereoisomers. Here, given the multiple (n = 2) chiral centers, there are 2n = 4 possible configurations that lack a plane of symmetry, as the ring skeleton exists in a non-planar chair conformation. In addition,...

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Expanded Tox21 Biological Assay Panel for the Prediction of Drug-Induced Liver Injury and Cardiotoxicity.

Environmental health perspectives·2026

Optimizing Extraction and HPLC-ESI-QTOF-MS/MS Analysis of Bound Phenolics From Okra (<i>Abelmoschus esculentus</i>) and Their Biological Activity.

Food science & nutrition·2026

Smartphone-integrated one-step colorimetric glucose detection at physiological pH enabled by a haloperoxidase mimic.

Analytical and bioanalytical chemistry·2026

An ultrahighly alkali-adaptive haloperoxidase mimic for phenolic pollutant discrimination and biofilm inhibition in harsh alkaline environments.

Water research·2026

Scaling Up Occupancy-centric Driving Scene Generation: Dataset and Method.

IEEE transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence·2026

Green Antibacterial-Antioxidant Hydrogel for Infected Wound Healing: Tea Polyphenol and Biosynthesized Silver Nanoparticles in a Deacetylated Sphingan WL Matrix.

ACS applied materials & interfaces·2026

See all related articles