Fusion of polymeric material-binding peptide to cell-adhesion artificial proteins enhances their biological function.

Orientation-controlled protein immobilization on a solid substrate surface is important for the development of biomedical materials such as scaffolds used in tissue engineering. In this study, the authors demonstrated that the introduction of material-binding peptides (MBPs) in Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD)-fused artificial proteins called blocking peptide fragment (BPF), which are fragments (residues 419-607) of the molecular chaperone DnaK, enhances the oriented adsorption of proteins on the polymer surface and improves their cell adhesion capability. The authors used isotactic poly(methyl methacrylate) (it-PMMA) binding peptides (c02 peptide; ELWRPTR) as a model system.