Photostimulation of In Vitro Cardiac Tissue Models via Programmable Peptide Coassembly of Cell-Interfacing Donor-Acceptor Aggregates

The project aims to develop a biomolecular-based technology to produce cell-internalizable nanostructures that can locally deliver photocurrents to cardiomyocytes, addressing limitations of bulky electrodes for stimulating excitable cells. This involves using complementary peptide pairs to drive sequence-controllable organization of energy transporting organic donor-acceptor units (quaterthiophene and perylene diimide) under physiological conditions. The resulting free-standing nanostructures are designed to be photocurrent-generating and cell-interacting, acting as phototransducer cardiac biomaterials with optoelectronic properties that mimic cues for directed interactions with cardiac cells. The technology aims to complement optogenetic techniques without genetic modification. The hypothesis is that photoinduced processes by peptidic coassemblies potentiate sequence/order tunable surface charging, leading to visible light cellular depolarization and stimulation of cardiomyocytes and cardiac tissues with high spatiotemporal resolution. This will be tested by establishing conditions for ordered coassembly formation and tissue contraction pacing by a model donor-acceptor peptide pair, and correlating structural order with photostimulation efficiency for a library of designer peptide pairs.