Coordination-Induced Self-Assembly of a Dipeptide into Multifunctional Chiral Nanostructures.

Short peptides could be used as chiral motifs to self-assemble into various artificial nanostructures with supramolecular or nanoscale chirality, but their applications still need to be expanded. Here, under the mediation of metal ions, the ferrocene-diphenylalanine (Fc- L F L F) peptide can self-assemble into various chiral nanostructures, including right-handed helical microflowers mediated by Cu 2+ , left-handed nanofibers mediated by Ag + , and right-handed nanofibers mediated by Zn 2+ and Cd 2+ . Meanwhile, the gold nanoparticles could be mineralized and deposited on Cu 2+ /Fc- L F L F microflowers to form AuNPs@Cu 2+ /Fc- L F L F, which showed significantly improved catalytic activity. The Ag + could be further mineralized on the peptide nanofibers to form AgNPs@Fc- L F L F, showing an excellent antibacterial effect. Overall, this study provides new insights into the chiral self-assembly of short peptides and demonstrates that the chiral peptide-metal assemblies may have broad prospects in the fields of biocatalysis and antimicrobials.