Engineering of peptidic materials inspired by the humboldt squid sucker ring teeth

The Sucker ring teeth (SRT) in this study is a structural biotool belonging to the Humboldt squid. SRT is mostly proteinaceous in composition and has a dry modulus of about 8GPa, falling in the modulus range of highly crosslinked synthetic polymers. The most abundant constituent of the SRT is a 39kDa protein, and the objective is to characterize and study how the highly repetitive peptide sequences selected from this protein that constitutes the SRT, have effects on the mechanical, physical and chemical properties on a hydrogel material. Several hydrogel formation techniques have been approached, including pH screening and crosslinking with Chitosan (CH) and Glutaraldehyde (GA) addition. The peptides selected did not self-assemble into hydrogels at the pHs tested, and we postulate that to be due to the lack of conjugated residues and sequence of peptides play an important role in this method of self-assembly. Our peptides were successfully integrated into an established hydrogel network using CH as a scaffold and GA as a crosslinker. From our studies, we found that the peptides did alter the properties of the hydrogels, and increasing the wt% concentration of peptide in the gels enhances both the mechanical properties and water absorbability of the hydrogel. Furthermore, SEM images also showed some distinct network structures in the gels with peptides incorporated, which we believe are structures formed by the peptides. These observations suggest that these peptides do have some effects on a hydrogel material’s properties, and we can tailor the properties of gel materials by the addition of these short peptide sequences that are derived from the SRT.Bachelor of Engineering (Materials Engineering