Recent Advances in Self-Assembled Peptides

Dear Colleagues,

The last two decades have witnessed great achievements in the design and self-assembly of peptides to generate functional materials. Peptides, as the molecular building blocks, can be either de novo designed or engineered, based on naturally derived sequences that self-assemble into highly ordered nanostructures and nanostructured networks. From a fundamental viewpoint, the self-assembly strategy, in combination with new peptide design principles and chemistry has provided powerful tools to fabricate a wide range of thermodynamically stable and kinetically trapped nanostructures, as well as dynamic and smart nanostructures and materials in response to specific triggers. Comprehensive structural characterization of these hierarchical structures and fundamental analysis and understanding of their thermodynamics and kinetics are crucial to develop self-assembled, well-regulatedpeptides. From the viewpoint of practical applications, the main focus is to develop optimal functionality of self-assembled peptides. Pre-functionalization of the molecular building blocks and post-modification of the self-assembly are both effective methods to endow functions on self-assembled peptides and both are being extensively explored with regard to a variety of nanotechnological and biotechnological applications.

The main aim of this Special Issue is to create an open forum where researchers can share their new methods, results, perspectives and insights, and work together to address emerging issues of both fundamental and practical significance in peptide self-assembly. Contributions to this issue, both in the form of original research or review articles, may cover all aspects of peptide self-assembly and multidisplinnary studies offering new principles, methodologies/strategies and insights are particularly welcome.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. He Dong
Guest Editor

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