(148e) Peptoids Stabilize Nanoparticles Under Biological Assembly Conditions

Sequence-specific polymers are proving to be a powerful approach to assembly and manipulation of matter on the nanometer scale. This has been most impressive in the case of DNA, and progress has been made toward templating inorganic nanoparticles using DNA nanostructures. One obstacle to this progress is that inorganic nanomaterials are often incompatible with DNA assembly conditions, which are aqueous solutions usually high in both monovalent and divalent salt. Synthetic peptide ligands have been shown to improve stability under high monovalent salt.

Ligands that are peptoids, or sequence-specific N-functional glycine oligomers, allow precise and flexible control over the arrangement of binding groups, steric spacers, charge, and other functionality. We have synthesized peptoids that can control growth of gold nanoparticles, prevent their aggregation in high-salt environments including divalent salt, and allow coadsorption of DNA or inclusion of other functionality. This degree of precision and versatility is likely to prove essential in bottom-up assembly of nanostructures and in biomedical applications of nanomaterials.