Synthesis of self-assembled peptide nanoparticles based on dityrosine covalent bonds

In this study, a method of self-assembly of peptides based on irreversible covalent bonds was studied by mimicking a biological covalent bond, dityrosine bond. A tyrosine-rich short peptide monomer having the sequence of Tyr-Tyr-Leu-Tyr-Tyr (YYLYY) was selected to achieve a high-density of dityrosine bond. The peptide nanoparticles covalently self-assembled with dityrosine bonds were synthesized by one-step photo-crosslinking of a peptide using a ruthenium catalyst under visible light. The effect of the concentration of each component for the size of the peptide nanoparticle was studied using dynamic light scattering, UV-Vis spectroscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. As a result, the synthesis conditions for size of the peptide nanoparticles ranging from 130 nm to 350 nm were optimized.