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Yong Duk Kim (Advisor: Prof. Dong-Kwon Lim), Discovery of homo-oligopeptide nanostructures as ice gr
2023.10.27 Views 1561
MS Ph. D integrated student Yong Duk Kim (Advisor: Prof. Dong-Kwon Lim),
Discovery of homo-oligopeptide nanostructures as ice growth inhibitor
Mimicking the Ice recrystallization inhibition (IRI) activity of antifreeze proteins (AFPs) with diverse materials and nanoscale structures are one of active research focus because of a limited fundamental understanding and promising future applications for cryopreservation technology. Therefore, exploration novel materials with potential IRI activity are essential. Oligopeptide-based materials are promising candidates because of the intrinsic biocompatibility and functionality of amino acid found in AFPs. Here we report the formation of self-assembled nanostructures with homo-oligopeptides consisted of amino acids (i.e., alanine, threonine, valine, and tyrosine) with diverse morphologies (i.e., spherical shape, layered structure, and wire structure) in aqueous solution. Furthermore, the importance of structure formation was confirmed by comparing the IRI activity of the solutions contained each amino acids (1-mer) or homo-oligopeptide (5-mer) nanostructure. Among homo-oligopeptides investigated, alanine homo-oligopeptide (n=5) with spherical shape showed a highly potent IRI activity, which is higher than that of self-assembled nanostructures of other homo-oligopeptides With the assistance of molecular dynamics (MD) simulation, the inhibition mechanism between the self-assembled nanostructure and the ice growth surface was theoretically confirmed. The IRI activity of the self-assembled nanostructures demonstrated direct adsorption to the growing ice crystal plane, which is consistent with theoretical results. These results can be expected to be used in various fields such as biomedicine and cryobiology due to the excellent performance and biocompatibility of the self-assembled nanostructure of homo-oligopeptides as an ice growth inhibitor.
Discovery of homo-oligopeptide nanostructures as ice growth inhibitor
The results of this study were conducted in collaboration with Professor dong juen Ahn research team Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering College and were published online in Nano letters(IF: 12.262) on October 16, 2023 under the title “Self-Assembled Nanostructures of Homo-Oligopeptide as a Potent Ice Growth Inhibitor”.
