Takahashi, H., et al., Towards structure determination of self-assembled peptides using dynamic nuclear polarization enhanced solid-state NMR spectroscopy. Angew Chem Int Ed Engl, 2013. 52(27): p. 6979-82.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23564735
Bio-inspired self-assemblies made of peptide building blocks have great potential for nanotechnology ranging from biological and pharmaceutical applications to (opto)electronics. With these goals, a variety of peptide nanoassemblies have been studied and designed over the last few decades. Inevitably, structural studies at an atomic scale are crucial to unravel the mechanisms that drive nanoassembly formation as well as to relate these structures to their physical and chemical properties. However, structure determination at an atomic level is challenging essentially because of the difficulty associated with using X-ray crystallography on such nanoassemblies.