Browsing by Subject "Peptide synthesis"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2

Open Access
Spatial organization of functional groups on bioactive supramolecular glycopeptide nanofibers for differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) to brown adipogenesis
(American Chemical Society, 2016-12) Caliskan, O. S.; Sardan, Ekiz M.; Tekinay, A. B.; Güler, Mustafa O.
Spatial organization of bioactive moieties in biological materials has significant impact on the function and efficiency of these systems. Here, we demonstrate the effect of spatial organization of functional groups including carboxylate, amine, and glucose functionalities by using self-assembled peptide amphiphile (PA) nanofibers as a bioactive scaffold. We show that presentation of bioactive groups on glycopeptide nanofibers affects mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in a distinct manner by means of adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation. Strikingly, when the glutamic acid is present in the glycopeptide backbone, the PA nanofibers specifically induced differentiation of MSCs into brown adipocytes in the absence of any differentiation medium as shown by lipid droplet accumulation and adipogenic gene marker expression analyses. This effect was not evident in the other glycopeptide nanofibers, which displayed the same functional groups but with different spatial organization. Brown adipocytes are attractive targets for obesity treatment and are found in trace amounts in adults, which also makes this specific glycopeptide nanofiber system an attractive tool to study molecular pathways of brown adipocyte formation.
Open Access
Supramolecular chirality in self-assembled peptide amphiphile nanostructures
(Royal Society of Chemistry, 2015) Garifullin, R.; Güler, Mustafa O.
Induced supramolecular chirality was investigated in the self-assembled peptide amphiphile (PA) nanosystems. Having shown that peptide chirality can be transferred to the covalently-attached achiral pyrene moiety upon PA self-assembly, the chiral information is transferred to molecular pyrene via weak noncovalent interactions. In the first design of a supramolecular chiral system, the chromophore was covalently attached to a peptide sequence (VVAGH) via an ε-aminohexanoic acid spacer. Covalent attachment yielded a PA molecule self-assembling into nanofibers. In the second design, the chromophore was encapsulated within the hydrophobic core of self-assembled nanofibers of another PA consisting of the same peptide sequence attached to lauric acid. We observed that supramolecular chirality was induced in the chromophore by PA assembly into chiral nanostructures, whether it was covalently attached, or noncovalently bound.