Havva Mehralitabar - Biophysics Department, Biological science faculty, Tarbiat Modares University, Jalal Al Ahmad, Pol Nasr
Majid Taghdir - Biophysics Department, Biological science faculty, Tarbiat Modares University, Jalal Al Ahmad, Pol Nasr
Hossain Nadrimanesh - Biophysics Department, Biological science faculty, Tarbiat Modares University, Jalal Al Ahmad, Pol Nasr

Biocompatible and non-immunogenic materials like peptides are a great candidate to be used as a tissue engineering 3D scaffolds. Self-assembling alkyl peptides which can construct nanofibers in this category of materials. There is the possibility of functionalizing of the scaffolds by bioactive peptides for various properties like differentiation of growth. Here in this survey, a functionalized alkyl peptide with neural differentiating properties has been taken to investigate its fiber formation and differentiation activity. The FAQRVPPEEEGGGAAAAK (C16) is the alkyl peptide sequence which FAQRVPP plays neural differentiation role and the rest of the sequence applied for different properties. Glu amino acids aid the solubility of the compound and Ala amino acids take part as beta-sheet structure forming part to stabilize the fiber structure. The efficacy of the differentiation is related to the availability of bioactive epitopes and also fiber stability can be affected by bulky epitopes aggregation on the fiber surface. So we considered two different systems composing of just all functionalized alkyl peptides and a combination of functionalized and non-functionalized (EEEGGGAAAAK (C16)) system with 1:2 ratios. The later one could help to have a less condensation of epitopes of the fiber surface and more stability of fiber and accessibility of epitopes. So by consideration of previously computational study of fiber formation from alkyl peptides they were synthesized and analyzed by CD, FTIR spectroscopy, and TEM imaging. The CD results showed that in the combined system more beta structure has formatted which can verify more prepotency of fiber construction of this system than the all functionalized system. Beside TEM image visualized the nanofibers with 8 and 10 nm in diameters for all functionalize and combined system respectively. This fibrous structure also formed a 3D scaffold in hydrogel networks to be used for cell culture

Bioactive scaffolds, Alkyl peptides, Self-assembling nanofiber, Amphiphilic peptides