Artificial peptide-nanospheres self-assembled from three-way junctions of beta-sheet-forming peptides.

Rational design of self-assembly of proteins, which plays pivotal roles in biology, is an important subject for biotechnology and also bottom-up nanotechnology. This paper has proposed a novel strategy for construction of artificial peptide-nanospheres by self-assembly. Mimicking formation of spherical viruses and clathrin, we designed a novel C3-symmetric peptide conjugate bearing three beta-sheet-forming peptides. These peptide conjugates formed antiparallel beta-structures and self-assembled into nanospheres with the size of about 20 nm in the acidic solution.