Casting Metal Nanowires Within Discrete Self-Assembled Peptide Nanotubes

• DOI: 10.1126/science.1082387
• Publication Date: 2003-04-25T12:15:25Z
• Authors: Meital Reches; Ehud Gazit
• Keywords: Amyloid beta-Peptides; Birefringence; Silver; Protein Conformation; Amino Acid Motifs; Molecular Sequence Data; Biosensing Techniques; Dipeptides; 02 engineering and technology; Microscopy, Electron; Solubility; Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared; Microscopy, Electron, Scanning; Nanotechnology; Amino Acid Sequence; 0210 nano-technology; Oxidation-Reduction

Tubular nanostructures are suggested to have a wide range of applications in nanotechnology. We report our observation the self-assembly very short peptide, Alzheimer's β-amyloid diphenylalanine structural motif, into discrete and stiff nanotubes. Reduction ionic silver within nanotubes, followed by enzymatic degradation peptide backbone, resulted production nanowires with long persistence length. The same dipeptide building block, made D-phenylalanine, enzymatically stable