Because peptides (sequences of amino acids) are the building blocks of living systems, biological gels made of peptides have significant potential for use in nutrition, cosmetics and biomedicine. But until now, there was no way to reliably predict whether a particular peptide sequence could form a useful gel. The discovery of functional gels relied largely on chance discoveries.

Professor Ulijn says that to streamline the discovery process, he and his colleagues at the University of Strathclyde sought "to design structures based on peptides that are inspired by biology but are much simpler - making them scalable, tunable, robust and functional."  As a result of their joint research, he said, "We now have predictive methods to achieve this."

Now that they have found a way to greatly simplify the peptide-testing process, it will be much easier to develop materials with useful properties.