Templated Crystallization of Glycine Homopeptides: Experimental and Computational Developments

The usage of glass beads as heterogeneous additives for the crystallization of glycine homopeptides is investigated, whereby glass beads are shown experimentally to increase the rate of crystallization. Induction time analysis indicates that the presence of glass beads acts enhances the kinetic factor for nucleation. These results are compared to those previously obtained by the authors for glycine and diglycine, and it is demonstrated that the increase in nucleation rate is proportional to the peptide chain length. Molecular dynamics simulations confirm that larger molecules exhibit faster nucleation in the presence of glass beads due to an increased number of interactions as observed with the longest hydrogen bond lifetime for triglycine, followed by diglycine and glycine.