Studies on the Self-Assembly of Dipeptides

Understanding the structure of amino acids and peptides is a major part of biochemistry courses. The research project discussed here will focus on the development of an experiment showcasing the construction of dipeptides that allows biochemistry students to synthesize and analyze dipeptides. This research will focus on creating the following dipeptides: phenylalanine-phenylalanine (Phe-Phe), tyrosine-tyrosine (Tyr-Tyr), phenylalanine-tyrosine (Phe-Tyr), and tyrosine-phenylalanine (Tyr-Phe). Research has shown that the dipeptide, Phe-Phe, self-assembles into an alpha helix. During this project, the remaining three dipeptides will be compared to Phe-Phe to see if they also form alpha helices. The following two didpeptides were successfully synthesized via a Biotage Peptide synthesizer: tyrosine-tyrosine and tyrosine-phenylalanine. Structural properties of the dipeptides will also be explored via dynamic light scattering analysis.