López Barreiro, Diego;
Folch-Fortuny, Abel;
Muntz, Iain;
Thies, Jens C;
Sagt, Cees MJ;
Koenderink, Gijsje H;
(2022)
Sequence Control of the Self-Assembly of Elastin-Like Polypeptides into Hydrogels with Bespoke Viscoelastic and Structural Properties.
Biomacromolecules
10.1021/acs.biomac.2c01405.
(In press).
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Abstract
The biofabrication of structural proteins with controllable properties via amino acid sequence design is interesting for biomedicine and biotechnology, yet a complete framework that connects amino acid sequence to material properties is unavailable, despite great progress to establish design rules for synthesizing peptides and proteins with specific conformations (e.g., unfolded, helical, β-sheets, or β-turns) and intermolecular interactions (e.g., amphipathic peptides or hydrophobic domains). Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations can help in developing such a framework, but the lack of a standardized way of interpreting the outcome of these simulations hinders their predictive value for the design of de novo structural proteins. To address this, we developed a model that unambiguously classifies a library of de novo elastin-like polypeptides (ELPs) with varying numbers and locations of hydrophobic/hydrophilic and physical/chemical-cross-linking blocks according to their thermoresponsiveness at physiological temperature. Our approach does not require long simulation times or advanced sampling methods. Instead, we apply (un)supervised data analysis methods to a data set of molecular properties from relatively short MD simulations (150 ns). We also experimentally investigate hydrogels of those ELPs from the library predicted to be thermoresponsive, revealing several handles to tune their mechanical and structural properties: chain hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity or block distribution control the viscoelasticity and thermoresponsiveness, whereas ELP concentration defines the network permeability. Our findings provide an avenue to accelerate the design of de novo ELPs with bespoke phase behavior and material properties.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Sequence Control of the Self-Assembly of Elastin-Like Polypeptides into Hydrogels with Bespoke Viscoelastic and Structural Properties |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1021/acs.biomac.2c01405 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.biomac.2c01405 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2022 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Chemical Engineering |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10162311 |
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