Sol-gel transition of charged fibrils composed of a model amphiphilic peptide.

We characterized the sol-gel transition of positively charged fibrils composed of the model amphiphilic peptide RADARADARADARADA (RADA 16-I) using a combination of microscopy, light scattering, microrheology and rheology techniques, and we investigated the dependence of the hydrogel formation on fibril concentration and ionic strength. The peptide is initially present as a dispersion of short rigid fibrils with average length of about 100 nm. During incubation, the fibrils aggregate irreversibly into longer fibrils and fibrillar aggregates. At peptide concentrations in the range 3-6.5 g/L, the fibrillar aggregates form a weak gel network which can be destroyed upon dilution. Percolation occurs without the formation of a nematic phase at a critical peptide concentration which decreases with increasing ionic strength. The gel structure can be well described in the frame of the fractal gel theory considering the network as a collection of fibrillar aggregates characterized by self-similar structure with a fractal dimension of 1.34.