What is DNA-peptide composite molecules?

As a new type of self-assembled molecule, DNA-peptide composite molecules have received widespread attention from researchers. DNA molecules have advantages such as programmability, high specificity, and diverse functions.

Peptide molecules are an important class of small biomolecules that can form nanomaterials with different structures through molecular self-assembly. Therefore, by covalent crosslinking, DNA peptide composite molecules with multi-level self-assembly behavior can be obtained, which can achieve integrated optimization of the functions of two important biomolecules.

Co-assembly of peptides and DNA molecules

At present, there have been numerous reports on the use of weak or electrostatic interactions between molecules to regulate the co assembly of peptides and DNA molecules, used to construct functional materials such as viral nanoparticles, which have good application characteristics in the fields of biomedicine and sensing detection.

However, there are still relatively few studies on the use of covalent bond to connect polypeptides with DNA molecules, design DNA peptide composite molecules, and regulate their self-assembly to form multi-level ordered functional materials, which is one of the research frontiers in the field of supramolecular self-assembly.

DNA can not only serve as a modifying molecule to provide localization, recognition, and other functions, but also as a crosslinking agent to connect peptides to form supramolecular network structures. The binding between DNA and short peptides has been reported in literature, where DNA is linked to the end of the polypeptide chain through cross-linking agents.

The polypeptide chain serves as the framework for supramolecular self-assembly, while DNA serves as the recognition component for further structural regulation. In addition, introducing functional groups into DNA peptide composite molecules can also make them have different functions. Functional groups can be connected to one end of the peptide or to the peptide chain through complementary DNA ends.

Article from Omizzur custom peptide synthesis:

https://www.omizzur.com/knowledge/dna-peptide-composite-molecules.html