Jeannette E. Marine

Combining monodisperse building blocks that have distinct folding properties serves as a modular strategy for controlling structural complexity in hierarchically organized materials. We combine an ?-helical bundle-forming peptide with self-assembling dendrons to better control the arrangement of functional groups within cylindrical nanostructures.

Peptide-?-peptide triblock molecules can self-assemble into 1-D nanostructures with extensive hydrogen-bonding networks under appropriate pH conditions. These materials are of interest due to the embedded ?-electron units that can facilitate energy and charge transport within biocompatible peptide matrices. Interactions among amino acid residues presented along these hydrogen-bonded structures lead to hierarchical bundling into larger fibrillar assemblies.