Towards in silico rational de novo design of peptides for inorganic interfaces

Abstract

Protein adsorption at inorganic surfaces is highly relevant to nano- and bionanotechnology. Just two examples of great significance are the use of specific peptide sequences to control cell deposition on tissue scaffolds, and the tethering of biophotosynthetic reaction centres on electrodes to harvest light for power generation and hydrogen production. Understanding of the behaviour of proteins in such situations and the design of surface-binding proteins for technological applications is currently limited by the largely empirical approaches used. We are, therefore, developing the application of molecular modelling to the elucidation of the behaviour of peptides at fluid/solid interfaces and the design of associated systems – an overview of this work is provided here.