Building fibrous biomaterials from alpha-helical and collagen-like coiled-coil peptides.

Over the decade and a half, interest has soared in the development of peptide-based biomaterials and their potential applications in biotechnology. This review outlines the advances during this time in the construction of biomaterials based on the alpha-helical coiled-coil and collagen-like peptides. These structures and the resulting designs are distinct from the more commonly used beta-structured peptides, which often lead to hydrogels comprising amyloid-like fibrils. The review covers basic design rules for these helical assemblies, and the various fibrous biomaterials that can be accomplished with them, which include rigid structures with straight, branched, or networked structures, decorated and functionalized systems, and most recently flexible fibers and entangled hydrogel networks. This plethora of alpha-helix-based biomaterials, together with more recent collagen-like assemblies, that are emerging from various laboratories complement those developed using beta-structured peptides, and open exciting new avenues for biomaterials research and potential new application areas. (c) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.