Presentation day

Tuesday  11:00 AM

 

TITLE

Supramolecular Hydrogels Self-assembled from Ultra-short Tetraphenylethylene-Capped Peptides

 

Abstract

Since supramolecular interaction is one of the fundament driving forces for the formation
of cellular nanostructures in biomaterials. Consisting of water and molecular nanofibers formed by selfassembly,
should be an ideal candidate for the development of soft nanotechnology. However, many of the
traditional p-conjugated luminescent gelators suffering from the aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ)
effect. In recent years, an attractive molecular building block of tetraphenylethylene (TPE) with aggregationinduced
emission (AIE) characteristics has been developed for application in the key component in
biosensors and luminescent systems. We have rationalized the AIE mechanism as restriction of
intramolecular rotations (RIR) in the aggregate state1. The AIE luminogens undergo a dramatic change in
fluorescence intensity, from relatively weak in the solution state to extremely bright in the aggregated state.
Combining an TPE and a peptide would be a promising strategy for constructing new luminescent selfassembled
biomaterials. Herein, we have synthesized the first example of a TPE-capped hydrogel with
shortest peptides reported to date.2 The newly discovered hydrogelators can form one-dimensional
nanostructures and three-dimensional semisolid materials via self-assembly in water (Scheme 1), pointing
to tremendous applications in biomaterials.

 

(1)Yuning Hong, Jacky W. Y. Lama and Ben Zhong Tang, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2009, 4332–4353
(2)Huang, C.-W.; Chang, J.-W.; Lin, H.-C.* 2015, manuscript in preparation.