We discuss the design of novel amphiphilic oligopeptides with hydrophobic and cationic amino acids to serve as models to understand peptide-DNA assembly. Biophysical and thermodynamic characterization of interaction of these amphiphilic peptides with plasmid DNA is presented. Peptides with at least +4 charges favor stable complex formation. Surface potential is dependent on the type of hydrophobic amino acid for a certain charge. Thermodynamically it is a spontaneous interaction between most of the peptides and plasmid DNA. Lys(7) and Tyr peptides with +4/+5 charges indicate cooperative binding with pDNA without saturation of interaction while Val(2)-Gly-Lys(4), Val-Gly-Lys(5), and Phe-Gly-Lys(5) lead to saturation of interaction indicating condensed pDNA within the range of N/Ps studied. We show that the biophysical properties of DNA-peptide complexes could be modulated by design and the peptides presented here could be used as building blocks for creating DNA-peptide complexes for various biomedical applications, mainly nucleic acid delivery.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.5582/ddt.2014.01029DOI Listing

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