CAREER: Responsive Self-Assembled Materials from Designed Peptides

University Of Delaware, Newark DE

Investigators

Abstract

Professor Joel P. Schneider of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Delaware is supported by the Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry Program for a research project that entails the design of peptides that fold and self-assemble into materials whose morphology and consequent function can be predictably changed by specific environmental cues. Responsive materials are prepared by linking intramolecular peptide folding to self-assembly. Peptides are designed to fold in response to a distinct external stimulus adopting a conformation that is amenable to self-assembly. The resultant self-assembled material has properties that are dictated by the individual peptides comprising the assembly; this allows novel materials with tailored morphologies and functions to be prepared through single molecule engineering. Peptides offer important features that can be exploited in the self-assembly process; their ability to form defined secondary structure and specific intermolecular interactions such as H-bonds, salt bridges and hydrophobic contacts can be manipulated to control material morphology as well as bulk material properties. Herein, will be developed a thorough understanding of the triggered, reversible folding and self-assembly events for a class of beta-hairpin peptides that form hydrogel material on cue. These responsive hydrogels are porous on the nano- and microscale yet incredibly rigid making them ideal candidates as tissue engineering scaffolds. The possibility of controlling the bulk properties of these hydrogels via peptide design will be explored. With the support of the Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry Program, Professor Schneider will help to establish the rules by which peptides fold and self-assemble, which will allow novel materials to be tailored for applications such as tissue engineering, therapeutic delivery and microfluidics. This research is an ideal platform for developing an educational outreach program involving high school teachers. The educational portion of this proposal seeks to provide high school teachers with a multi-faceted research experience to make them better teachers and mentors of the chemical profession. Teacher-scholars will accomplish this in a 10 week summer program by: performing cutting edge research within a laboratory at the University of Delaware; visiting and interviewing industrial research chemists at Dupont and AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals; developing new curricula based on their experiences that will be incorporated into their high school chemistry class room. The exact nature of the curricula is dependent on the Teacher-scholar's high school and state educational guidelines, but could include a new laboratory experiment, lectures or team problem sets. If a new lab is developed, high school students may have the opportunity to interact directly with Professor Schneider's lab via sample submission for routine analysis. In contrast to a program that entails bringing only one or two high school students into a lab to gain experience, this program provides an avenue for classrooms of high school students to gain industrial and collegiate experience through their teacher and the newly developed curriculum.