Controlling heme redox properties in peptide amphiphile fibers with sequence and heme loading ratio.

Controlling the reduction midpoint potential of heme B is a key factor in many bioelectrochemical reactions, including long-range electron transport. Currently, there are a number of globular model protein systems to study this biophysical parameter; however, there are none for large polymeric protein model systems (e.g.

Emerging Approaches for Enabling RNAi Therapeutics.

RNA interference (RNAi) is a primitive evolutionary mechanism developed to escape incorporation of foreign genetic material. siRNA has been instrumental in achieving the therapeutic potential of RNAi by theoretically silencing any gene of interest in a reversible and sequence-specific manner. Extrinsically administered siRNA generally needs a delivery vehicle to span across different physiological barriers and load into the RISC complex in the cytoplasm in its functional form to show its efficacy.

Engineered Histidine-Enriched Facial Lipopeptides for Enhanced Intracellular Delivery of Functional siRNA to Triple Negative Breast Cancer Cells.

Cytosolic delivery of functional siRNA remains the major challenge to develop siRNA-based therapeutics. Designing clinically safe and effective siRNA transporter to deliver functional siRNA across the plasma and endosomal membrane remains a key hurdle. With the aim of improving endosomal release, we have designed cyclic and linear peptide-based transporters having an Arg-His-Arg template.

Engineered isopeptide bond stabilized fibrin inspired nanoscale peptide based sealants for efficient blood clotting.

Designing biologically inspired nanoscale molecular assembly with desired functionality is a challenging endeavour. Here we report the designing of fibrin-inspired nanostructured peptide based sealants which facilitate remarkably fast entrapping of blood corpuscles (~28 seconds) in contrast to fibrin (~56 seconds). Our engineered sealants are stabilized by lysine-aspartate ionic interactions and also by N(γ-glutamyl) lysine isopeptide bond mediated covalent interaction.

Engineered Nanostructured Facial Lipopeptide as Highly Efficient Molecular Transporter.

Designing an effective peptide based molecular transporter for the intracellular delivery of hydrophilic therapeutic biomacromolecules remains a considerable challenge. Highly basic oligoarginine and lipidated arginine rich cell penetrating peptides have been reported in the literature as molecular transporters, which were extensively used for cellular internalization of significantly large biopharmaceuticals. However, oligoarginine based molecular transporters with l-arginine residues pose significant challenges due to proteolytic instability and limited stability of noncovalent peptide-cargo nanocomplexes.