A metal–peptide capsule by multiple ring threading

Tomohisa Sawada (), Yuuki Inomata, Koya Shimokawa and Makoto Fujita ()
Additional contact information
Tomohisa Sawada: The University of Tokyo
Yuuki Inomata: The University of Tokyo
Koya Shimokawa: Saitama University
Makoto Fujita: The University of Tokyo

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Cavity creation is a key to the origin of biological functions. Small cavities such as enzyme pockets are created simply through liner peptide folding. Nature can create much larger cavities by threading and entangling large peptide rings, as learned from gigantic virus capsids, where not only chemical structures but the topology of threaded rings must be controlled. Although interlocked molecules are a topic of current interest, they have for decades been explored merely as elements of molecular machines, or as a synthetic challenge. No research has specifically targeted them for, and succesfully achieved, cavity creation. Here we report the emergence of a huge capsular framework via multiple threading of metal–peptide rings. Six equivalent C4-propeller-shaped rings, each consisting of four oligopeptides and Ag+, are threaded by each other a total of twelve times (crossing number: 24) to assemble into a well-defined 4 nm-sized sphere, which acts as a huge molecular capsule.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13594-4 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-13594-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-13594-4

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().