Amino Acids and Short Peptides Based Supramolecular Assembly

Biological system uses supramolecular assembly for numerous important and complicated biochemical process in simple ways. One of the units of supramolecular assembly used by biological system is based on amino acids. Natural supramolecular assembly formed by amino acids are generally very long polymer of amino acids, which includes peptides, proteins, enzyme, etc. However, for amino acids-based synthetic supramolecular assembly, small number of amino acid units even in some cases single amino acid-based compound were used. It follows that synthetic nanomaterials based on amino acid-based supramolecular assembly can be designed to replicate the naturally occurring biological system and be used for a variety of purposes. Herein, due to their biocompatibility, biodegradability, simplicity of synthesis and rich chemistry of naturally occurring α-amino acids, short peptide-based supramolecular structures have been reviewed.