Using an effective tight-binding model, together with a transfer matrix technique, we investigate the electronic transport through an oligopeptide chain composed by two amino acid pairs alanine-lysine (Ala-Lys) and threonine-alanine (Thr-Ala), respectively, sandwiched between two platinum electrodes. Our results show that factors such as the oligopeptide chain length and the possible combinations between the amino acids residues are crucial to the diode-like profile of the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics, whose asymmetric curves were analyzed using the inverted rectification ratio (IRR). (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.