posted on 2021-04-26, 19:35authored byRongying Liu, Ran Zhang, Long Li, Zdravko Kochovski, Lintong Yao, Mu-Ping Nieh, Yan Lu, Tongfei Shi, Guosong Chen
Nature provides us a panorama of
fibrils with tremendous structural
polymorphism from molecular building blocks to hierarchical association
behaviors. Despite recent achievements in creating artificial systems
with individual building blocks through self-assembly, molecularly
encoding the relationship from model building blocks to fibril association,
resulting in controlled macroscopic properties, has remained an elusive
goal. In this paper, by employing a designed set of glycopeptide building
blocks and combining experimental and computational tools, we report
a library of controlled fibril polymorphism with elucidation from
molecular packing to fibril association and the related macroscopic
properties. The growth of the fibril either axially or radially with
right- or left-handed twisting is determined by the subtle trade-off
of oligosaccharide and oligopeptide components. Meanwhile, visible
evidence for the association process of double-strand fibrils has
been experimentally and theoretically proposed. Finally the fibril
polymorphs demonstrated significant different macroscopic properties
on hydrogel formation and cellular migration control.