Chiral restructuring of peptide enantiomers on gold nanomaterials

The use of biomolecules has been invaluable at generating and controlling optical chirality in nanomaterials; however, the structure and properties of the chiral biotemplate are not well understood due to the complexity of peptide-nanoparticle interactions. In this study, we show that the complex interactions between 6-peptides and gold nanomaterials led to a chiral restructuring of peptides as demonstrated by circular dichroism and proteolytic cleavage of 6-peptides via gold-mediated inversion of peptide chirality. The gold nanoparticles synthesized using 6-peptide produce a highly ordered atomic surface and restructured peptide bonds for enzyme cleavage. Differences in gold nanoparticle catalyzed reduction of 4-nitrophenol were observed on the basis of the chiral peptide used in nanoparticle synthesis. Notably, the proteolytic cleavage of 6-peptides on gold provides an opportunity for designing nanoparticle based therapeutics to treat peptide venoms, access new chemistries, or modulate the catalytic activity of nanomaterials.