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Updated: Aug 28, 2025

Formation of Ordered Biomolecular Structures by the Self-assembly of Short Peptides
Published on: November 21, 2013
Tailored Cross-β Assemblies Establish Peptide "Dominos" Structures for Anchoring Undruggable Pharmacophores
Limin Zhang1, Mengzhen Li1, Minxuan Wang1
1Key Laboratory of Medical Molecule Science and Pharmaceutics Engineering, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Key Laboratory of Cluster Science of Ministry of Education, Beijing Key Laboratory of Photoelectronic/Electro-photonic Conversion Materials, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Institute of Engineering Medicine, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, P. R. China.
Abstract:
β-sheets have the ability to hierarchically stack into assemblies, and much effort has been spent on designing different peptides to regulate their assembly behaviors. Although the progress is remarkable, it remains challenging to manipulate them in a controllable way for achieving both tailored structures and specific functions. In this study, we obtained bola-like peptides using de novo design and combinatorial chemical screening. By regulating the solvent-accessible surface area of the peptide chain, a series of assemblies with different tilt angles and active sites of the β-sheet were obtained, resembling collapsed dominos. The structure-activity relationship of the optimized peptide NQ40 system was established and its ability to target the PD-L1 was demonstrated. This study successfully established the structure-function relationship of β-sheets assemblies and has positive implications on the rational design of peptide assemblies that possess recognition abilities.
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