Modeling of Self-Assembled Peptide Nanotubes and Determination of Their Chirality Sign Based on Dipole Moment Calculations

The chirality quantification is of great importance in structural biology, where the differences in proteins twisting can provide essentially different physiological effects. However, this aspect of the chirality is still poorly studied for helix-like supramolecular structures. In this work, a method for chirality quantification based on the calculation of scalar triple products of dipole moments is suggested. As a model structure, self-assembled nanotubes of diphenylalanine (FF) made of L- and D-enantiomers were considered. The dipole moments of FF molecules were calculated using semi-empirical quantum-chemical method PM3 and the Amber force field method. The obtained results do not depend on the used simulation and calculation method, and show that the D-FF nanotubes are twisted tighter than L-FF. Moreover, the type of chirality of the helix-like nanotube is opposite to that of the initial individual molecule that is in line with the chirality alternation rule general for different levels of hierarchical organization of molecular systems. The proposed method can be applied to study other helix-like supramolecular structures.