• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.31 no.12
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• pp.3740-3744
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• 2010

A typically designed 'Peptide Lego' has two distinct surfaces: a hydrophilic side that contains the complete charge distribution and a hydrophobic side. In this article, we describe the fabrication of a unique lego-type peptide with the AEAEYAKAK sequence. The novel peptide with double amphiphilic surfaces is different from typical peptides due to special arrangement of the residues. The results of CD, FT-IR, AFM and DLS demonstrate that the peptide with the random coil characteristic was able to form stable nanostructures that were mediated by non-covalent interactions in an aqueous solution. The data further indicated that despite its different structure, the peptide was able to undergo self-assembly similar to a typical peptide. In addition, the use of hydrophobic pyrene as a model allowed the peptide to provide a new type of potential nanomaterial for drug delivery. These efforts collectively open up a new direction in the fabrication of nanomaterials that are more perfect and versatile.