Peptide Membranes From de novo Designed Helix-Loop-Helix Peptides

Research - Thomas Heim

The design of amphiphilic peptides for lipid membrane mimetics is of high interest for the synthesis of biomembrane mimetics, microreactors, and drug delivery systems in medical applications. The sub-class of surfactant-like amphiphilic peptides is currently based on small linear peptidic molecules with hydrophobic tails and hydrophilic headgroups.

To overcome design limitations of recent linear, amphiphilic peptides, a novel design approach will be studied in my PhD project, using a helix-loop-helix motif. This motif increases the structural complexity and enables more fine-tuning options for precisely controlling shape and properties of the resulting membranes towards tailor-made peptide vesicles for various applications.

This interdisciplinary project combines solid-phase peptide synthesis with biophysical analysis to characterise the peptide particles.

It is aimed to investigate applications of these peptide vesicles as carrier systems or biomimetic membranes in which de novo designed transmembrane proteins could be inserted and potential signalling through the membrane.