Peptide-based supramolecular hydrogels have been comprehensively investigated in biomaterial applications because of their unique bioactivity, biofunctionality, and biocompatible features. However, the presence of organic building blocks in peptide-based hydrogels often results in low mechanical stability. To expand their practical use and range of applications, it is necessary to develop the tool kit available to prepare bioinspired, peptide-based supramolecular hydrogels with improved mechanical stability. In this paper, we present an innovative electrostatic and cross-linking approach in which naphthyl-Phe-Phe-Cys (NapFFC) oligopeptides are combined with gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and calcium ions (Ca(2+)) to produce peptide-based supramolecular hydrogels. We further investigate the interactions among NapFFC, AuNPs and Ca(2+) by microscopy. The morphology of the nanofibrous network constructions and the binding forces exhibited from the hydrogel demonstrated that the combination of two mechanisms successfully enhanced the mechanical stability through the formation of a densely entangled fibrous network of peptide multimers that is attributed to the AuNP linkage and Ca(2+)-induced agglomeration. UV-vis spectrophotometry and fluorescence analysis were also used to demonstrate the enhanced stability of the hydrogel under various conditions such as thermal, solvent erosion, pH value and sonication. All results indicate that the presence of AuNPs and Ca(2+) can strengthen the prepared hydrogel by more than doubling the diameter of NapFFC nanofibers, enabling the formation of stronger frameworks and slowing the release of components. Further experiments confirmed that HeLa cells can grow on the bioinspired NapFFC-AuNP hydrogel and exhibit high cell viability and that these cells were killed on contact with a hydrogel containing a drug. Our peptide-based supramolecular hydrogels prepared from the observed electrostatic and cross-linking mechanisn exhibited a significantly improved mechanical stability, making them well suited to use as a drug carrier in hydrogel dressings and as extracellular materials (ECMs) for tissue engineering.

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A sensitive fluorescent biosensing strategy based on structure-switching of molecular beacon for the detection of single nucleotide polymorphism is proposed in this study. In the absence of target DNA, only low background fluorescence can be detected since the formation of hairpin structure induces close proximity of fluorophore and quencher. On the contrary, the fluorescence intensity increases significantly after introduction of target DNA because structure-switching of molecular beacon results in separation of fluorophore and quencher. The change of fluorescence intensity is linear with concentration of target DNA, and a molecular beacon-based sensing system for fluorescent detection of single nucleotide polymorphism is fabricated. The target DNA can be sensitively detected in a linear dynamic range from 17.58nM-1.125μM with a low detection limit of 8 nM. Moreover, good reproducibility and high specificity are achieved.