Substrate Specificity of Peptide Adsorption: A Model Study

TL;DR

This study uses a lattice heteropolymer model and contact density algorithm to explore how peptide adsorption varies with substrate type, revealing complex phase behavior influenced by temperature and solvent conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of the contact density chain-growth algorithm to analyze substrate-specific peptide conformational transitions.

Findings

Complex pseudo-phase diagrams depend on substrate type.

Adsorption behavior varies with temperature and solvent.

Distinct conformational transitions are identified for different substrates.

Abstract

Applying the contact density chain-growth algorithm to lattice heteropolymers, we identify the conformational transitions of a nongrafted hydrophobic-polar heteropolymer with 103 residues in the vicinity of a polar, a hydrophobic, and a uniformly attractive substrate. Introducing only two system parameters, the numbers of surface contacts and intrinsic hydrophobic contacts, respectively, we obtain surprisingly complex temperature and solvent dependent, substrate-specific pseudo-phase diagrams.