Development of self-assembled, photoluminescent peptide nanomaterials as efficient sensing platform

Abstract

The self-assembly of molecular building blocks into ordered nanostructures is not only a key to various biological phenomena but also an attractive route for fabricating novel nanomaterials. Recently, a peptide-based self-assembly has drawn much attention due to its unparalleled properties, such as diverse functionality and molecular recognition abilities, as well as environmentally-friendly characteristics not requiring harsh processing conditions. Among the various peptide-based building blocks reported to date, aromatic short peptide derivatives are simplest one and can be self-assembled various nanostructures. Moreover, they exhibit novel optical, mechanical, and electrochemical properties. Therefore, many researchers investigated the applications using the peptide derivatives-based nanostructures for electronics, sensors, catalysis, drug delivery, tissue engineering, and medical imaging. In this thesis study, a self-assembled nanomaterials consisting of aromatic short peptide derivatives has been employed as a sensing platform through in-situ immobilization of functional molecules. We used the FF molecules as building blocks for self-assembly and fabricated the three dimensional nanofibrous matrix (i. e. hydrogel) with micropores and nanotubes. The peptide-based nanomaterials (hydrogel or nanotubes) were functionalized by quantum dots/enzymes or lanthanide complexes. In this work, we investigated (1) characterization of Fmoc-FF hydrogels incorporated with quantum dots and enzymes, (2) biosensing applications using self-assembled, photoluminescent peptide hydrogels, (3) characterization of photoluminescent peptide nanotubes, and (4) sensing applications using the FF nanotubes incorporated with lanthanide complexes. The self-assembled, photoluminescent peptide nanomaterials were found to be efficient development for the optical event-based sensory format.