Mechanical characterization of self-assembling peptide hydrogels by microindentation.
Mechanical characterization of self-assembling peptide hydrogels by microindentation.
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DOI：
10.1002/jbm.b.32906
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发表时间：
2013-08
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Nathan A. Hammond;R. Kamm
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Nathan A. Hammond;R. Kamm
由自组装合成寡肽形成的水凝胶已经被研究了近20年，用于组织工程和药物递送。尽管人们已经对这些材料的微观结构了解了很多，但仍然存在关于肽丝如何有序形成凝胶的问题。这些未回答的问题使我们对所观察到的肽丝的纳米级机械性质的理解与它们构成的凝胶的宏观性质之间存在脱节。这项研究有助于弥合这一差距，通过检查长丝长度和长丝间的交联作用，在确定散装机械性能。微压痕用于机械特性，和微观结构观察使用薄截面透射电子显微镜图像的凝胶嵌入树脂。结果表明，其中长丝不密集捆绑如前所述的凝胶结构，并确认交联可以是一种有效的策略，以增加自组装寡肽凝胶的刚度。
Hydrogels formed from self-assembling synthetic oligopeptides have been studied for almost 2 decades for use in tissue engineering and drug delivery. Although a great deal has been learned about the microstructure of these materials, there remain questions about how peptide filaments are ordered to form a gel. These unanswered questions leave a disconnect between our understanding of the observed nanoscale mechanical properties of peptide filaments and the macroscale properties of the gels they constitute. This study helps to bridge this gap by examining the role of filament length and interfilament crosslinks in determining bulk mechanical properties. Microindentation was used for mechanical characterization, and microstructure was observed using thin-section transmission electron microscopy images of gels embedded in resin. Results suggest a gel structure in which filaments are not densely bundled as previously suggested and confirm that crosslinking can be an effective strategy to increase the stiffness of self-assembling oligopeptide gels.