Selenium-Containing Short Peptides With Self-Assembling And Redox Responsive Properties

Self-assembly is abundant in nature, ranging from relatively simple systems, such as lipid bilayers in cell membranes and the double-helical DNA structure, to the complex structures of organs. Many of these natural assemblies are dynamic and their formation is reversible, and extensive research efforts have been made recently to develop smart materials by mimicking these dynamic self-assembly systems and their reversible formation, such as light-responsive smart materials, electric-responsive smart materials, chemical-responsive smart materials.Redox systems (e.g., NADH/NAD) have been widely used to regulate various biological activities, such as the disassembly of polymer micelles and nanogels, and the release of bioactive molecules. Inspired by these examples, we developed the molecular hydrogel system of selenium-containing peptides with redox responsive and reversible self-assembly properties. We also developed a biocompatible method for molecular hydrogelation because we used VC to convert peptides that contain selenoxide to their reduced form of selenide.We further demonstrated that such redox control can regulate the catalytic activity of histidine-containing peptides by grafting the histidine to the selenium-containing peptides with different self-assembled nanostructures. Our results suggested that the bioactivity of self-assembled peptides was relevant to self-assembled structures and was switchable The development of selenium containing peptides with redox responsive and self-assembly properties will offer a new direction of making nature-mimicking smart materials with promising properties.