Ion and temperature effects on the self-assembly of short peptides - SANS studies

In this work, we have selected a group of 5 short peptides I3GGHK, I4GGHK, I3GGGHK, I3GGHHK and I3KGGH to study how changes in peptide concentration, [Cu2+] and temperature affect their nanostructuring by SANS. Through extensive studies by AFM and TEM, we found that changes in GH position in the sequence can hugely affect nanostructures via altering peptide packing, layer thickness and twisting. These structural effects affect how molecules can align and form layers and extend to higher orders of structures. Because these sizes are in the order of a few nanometers and difficult to image but are ideal for SANS measurements. SANS2D is preferred because of its high structural sensitivity and wider Q range to cover different size ranges. We request 2 days of SANS2d or 4 days of LOQ to complete the work.