Characterisation of pH dependent peptide nanostructures using small angle scattering

Abstract

The development of adaptive nanomaterials that are responsive to changes in their surrounding environment would enable such materials to be used in wide range of applications such as drug delivery vehicles or biosensors. Reversible boronic ester chemistry, which is used in this work, has several advantages as a building block for making adaptive nanomaterials including the ease of preparation, high sensitivity to external stimuli such as pH, and relative stability especially when compared to other non-covalent reversible systems. Herein, by using small boronic acids as anchor and peptides as connectors, we report progress in the initial development of novel, peptidyl-based pH dependent adaptive nanomaterials using reversible boronic ester chemistry and its characterisation using small angle X-ray scattering.