Control of stability of polypeptide multilayer nanofilms by quantitative control of disulfide bond formation

The crosslinking of polymers in a polymeric material will alter the mechanical properties of the material. Control over the mechanical properties of polyelectrolyte multilayer films (PEMs) could be useful for applications of the technology in medicine and other areas. Disulfide bonds are 'natural' polypeptide crosslinks found widely in wild-type proteins. Here, we have designed and synthesized three pairs of oppositely charged 32mer polypeptide to have 0, 4, or 8 cysteine (Cys) residues per molecule, and we have characterized physical properties of the peptides in a PEM context. The average linear density of free thiol in the designed peptides was 0, 0.125, or 0.25 per amino acid residue. The peptides were used to make 10-bilayer PEMs by electrostatic layer-by-layer self-assembly (LBL). Cys was included in the peptides to study specific effects of disulfide bond formation on PEM properties. Features of film assembly have been found to depend on the amino acid sequence, as in protein folding. Following polypeptide self-assembly into multilayer films, Cys residues were disulfide-crosslinked under mild oxidizing conditions. The stability of the crosslinked films at acidic pH has been found to depend on the number of Cys residues per peptide for a given crosslinking procedure. Crosslinked and non-crosslinked films have been analysed by ultraviolet spectroscopy (UVS), ellipsometry, and atomic force microscopy (AFM) to characterize film assembly, surface morphology, and disassembly. A selective etching model of the disassembly process at acidic pH is proposed on the basis of the experimental data. In this model, regions of film in which the disulfide bond density is low are etched at a higher rate than regions where the density is high.