Tryptophan-Based Self-Assembling Peptides with Bacterial Flocculation and Antimicrobial Properties

Tryptophan as an aromatic amino acid with a hydrophobic indole group plays important roles in stabilizing protein structures and enhancing molecular bindings in nature, but was rarely used in the molecular design of self-assembling peptides or gelators. Therefore, we prepared a series of short peptides from Trp amino acids and examined the potential roles of Trp residues for regulating peptide self-assembly and gelation. The introduced Trp amino acids not only diversify the molecular structures of peptide gelators, but also promote aromatic and hydrogen-bonding interactions for supramolecular self-assembling and gelation, which generates self-assembled nanostructures with twisted helical morphologies and supramolecular hydrogels with low minimal gelation concentrations. More importantly, the self-assembling peptides with Trp residues displayed strong preference for interacting with the lipidic membranes of bacteria, which resulted in bacterial flocculation and the death of E. coli and S. aureus.