Computational Design of Homotetrameric Peptide Bundle Variants Spanning a Wide Range of Charge States

With the ability to design their sequences and structures, peptides can be engineered to realize a wide variety of functionalities and structures. Herein, computational design was used to identify a set of 17 peptides having a wide range of putative charge states but the same tetrameric coiled-coil bundle structure. Calculations were performed to identify suitable locations for ionizable residues (D, E, K, and R) at the bundle's exterior sites, while interior hydrophobic interactions were retained. The designed bundle structures spanned putative charge states of -32 to +32 in units of electron charge. The peptides were experimentally investigated using spectroscopic and scattering techniques. Thermal stabilities of the bundles were investigated using circular dichroism. Molecular dynamics simulations assessed structural fluctuations within the bundles. The cylindrical peptide bundles, 4 nm long by 2 nm in diameter, were covalently linked to form rigid, micron-scale polymers and characterized using transmission electron microscopy. The designed suite of sequences provides a set of readily realized nanometer-scale structures of tunable charge that can also be polymerized to yield rigid-rod polyelectrolytes.