Journal
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
Volume 7, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms13482
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Funding
- Argentinian Friends of Tel Aviv University
- Israel Science Foundation [571/11, 550/15, 1589/14]
- Minerva Centre for bio-hybrid complex systems
- European Research Council BISON project
- Israeli National Nanotechnology Initiative
- Helmsley Charitable Trust
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Mimicking the multifunctional bacterial type IV pili (T4Ps) nanofibres provides an important avenue towards the development of new functional nanostructured biomaterials. Yet, the development of T4Ps-based applications is limited by the inability to form these nanofibres in vitro from their pilin monomers. Here, to overcome this limitation, we followed a reductionist approach and designed a self-assembling pilin-based 20-mer peptide, derived from the presumably bioelectronic pilin of Geobacter sulfurreducens. The designed 20-mer, which spans sequences from both the polymerization domain and the functionality region of the pilin, self-assembled into ordered nanofibres. Investigation of the 20-mer revealed that shorter sequences which correspond to the polymerization domain form a supramolecular b-sheet, contrary to their helical configuration in the native T4P core, due to alternative molecular recognition. In contrast, the sequence derived from the functionality region maintains a native-like, helical conformation. This study presents a new family of self-assembling peptides which form T4P-like nanostructures.
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