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3. Urea-Modified Self-Assembling Peptide Amphiphiles That Form Well-Defined Nanostructures and Hydrogels for Biomedical Applications

Xing et al. report a new category of peptide amphiphile molecules that can form one-dimensional nanofibers through a combination of hydrophobic and hydrogen bonding interactions. The authors replace the amide bonds typically used in the peptide region with a urea moiety, which allowed for enhanced hydrogen bonding, stability, and self-healing properties, and demonstrated the use of the fibers as cell culture scaffolds.

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5. Bioactive Fibronectin-III10–DNA Origami Nanofibers Promote Cell Adhesion and Spreading

Buchberger et al. report the synthesis of nanofibers composed of DNA origami cuboids linked by bioactive fibronectin domains, using two orthogonal coiled-coil pairs to drive the hierarchical self-assembly (10.1021/acsabm.2c00303). These hybrid protein–DNA nanofibers demonstrate enhanced fibroblast cell adhesion and spreading compared with fibers lacking the protein (or the protein alone) and provide a way to independently tune the dimensions and bioactivity of a fibrous biomaterial.

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6. pH-Responsive Self-Assembling Peptide-Based Biomaterials: Designs and Applications

 Li et al. review self-assembling peptide biomaterials that are pH-responsive, enabling materials for tissue scaffolding as well as controlled drug release.

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7. Recent Advances in Self-Assembled DNA Nanostructures for Bioimaging

Yang et al. describe recent advances in the use of DNA nanostructures for bioimaging, with a particular emphasis on tuning the structure, size, and shape, as well as their application to super resolution and multiplexed imaging applications.

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8. Harnessing the Structural and Functional Diversity of Protein Filaments as Biomaterial Scaffolds

Lam et al. describe the use of protein nanofilaments for various applications including enzyme scaffolding, inorganic material templating, charge transfer, or synthesis of hydrogels.

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9. Metal–Phenolic Networks as Versatile Coating Materials for Biomedical Applications

Gang et al. discuss the use of self-assembling metal-phenolic networks, with applications in cancer theranostic nanoparticles, as well as cell encapsulation and microbe protection for biomedical applications (10.1021/acsabm.2c00136).

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10. Protein–Nanoparticle Complex Structure Determination by Cryo-Electron Microscopy

Sen et al. demonstrate that cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM), which has been revolutionizing the structural elucidation of biomolecules in the past decade, can also be used to characterize hybrid protein-nanoparticle systems (10.1021/acsabm.2c00130). The authors show the use of GroEL and ferritin proteins cages to nucleate and synthesize platinum and iron oxide nanoparticles, respectively, and demonstrate a sub-4 Å reconstruction for the GroEL system. The insights from this work will aid in the design and realization of other protein–nanoparticle hybrid materials.