Method for the design of fibrillar collagen-mimetic peptide self-assemblies

A method for making a collagen mimetic peptide capable of self-assembly comprising:

• (a) combining a plurality of self-assembling collagen mimetic peptides consisting essentially of Xaa-Yaa-Gly tripeptide repeats, wherein Xaa and Yaa are amino acids, wherein the number of tripeptide repeats (nT) is 3v±1, wherein v is a positive non-zero integer, wherein the peptide is n residues in length, wherein n=nT×3;
• and
• (b) incubating the plurality of self-assembling collagen mimetic peptides of step (a) for a sufficient time to allow the self-assembling collagen mimetic peptides to self-assemble into a triple helical collagen assembly to form a composition,
• wherein neighboring self-assembling collagen mimetic peptides of the triple helical collagen assembly are offset by v Xaa-Yaa-Gly tripeptide repeats,
• wherein the Yaa amino acid of a Kt Xaa-Yaa-Gly tripeptide repeat comprises an amino acid capable of charge pairing and the Xaa amino acid of a Dt Xaa-Yaa-Gly tripeptide repeat comprises an amino acid capable of charge pairing with the Yaa amino acid of the Kt Xaa-Yaa-Gly tripeptide repeat on a neighboring self-assembling collagen mimetic peptide of the triple helical collagen assembly, and
• wherein Kt is a positive integer from 1 to nT and Dt=(Kt±v+1) mod nT.