Self-Assembly of Polyoxometalate-Peptide Hybrids in Solution: Elucidating the Contributions of Multiple Possible Driving Forces

Incorporating the building blocks of nature (e.g., peptides and DNA) into inorganic polyoxometalate (POM) clusters is a promising approach to improve the compatibilities of POMs in biological fields. To extend their biological applications, it is necessary to understand the importance of different non-covalent interactions during self-organization. A series of Anderson POM-peptide hybrids have been used as a simple model to demonstrate the role of different interactions in POM-peptide (biomolecules) systems. Regardless of peptide chain length, these hybrids follow similar solution behaviors, forming hollow, spherical supramolecular structures in acetonitrile/water mixed solvents. The incorporation of peptide tails introduces interesting stimuli-responsive properties to temperature, hybrid concentration, solvent polarity and ionic strength. Unlike the typical bilayer amphiphilic vesicles, they are found to follow the blackberry-type assemblies of hydrophilic macroions, which are regulated by electrostatic interaction and hydrogen bonding. The formation of electrostatic assemblies before the supramolecular formation is confirmed by ion-mobility mass spectrometry (IMS-MS).