Biological Containers: Protein Cages as Multifunctional Nanoplatforms

TLDR

Materials scientists increasingly draw inspiration from biological systems that fabricate materials under mild conditions using self‑assembled macromolecular templates; protein cages such as viral capsids and ferritin serve as examples, offering interior, exterior, and subunit interface surfaces that can be synthetically exploited. The subunits of these protein cages can be chemically and genetically modified to impart designed functionality to different surfaces of the cage. These modifications provide great synthetic flexibility, enabling multifunctionality within a single cage and allowing hierarchical assembly into new materials for applications ranging from electronics to biomedicine.

Abstract

Abstract Materials scientists increasingly draw inspiration from the study of how biological systems fabricate materials under mild synthetic conditions by using self‐assembled macromolecular templates. Containerlike protein architectures such as viral capsids and ferritin are examples of such biological templates. These protein cages have three distinct interfaces that can be synthetically exploited: the interior, the exterior, and the interface between subunits. The subunits that comprise the building blocks of these structures can be modified both chemically and genetically in order to impart designed functionality to different surfaces of the cage. Therefore, the cages possess a great deal of synthetic flexibility, which allows for the introduction of multifunctionality in a single cage. In addition, hierarchical assembly of the functionalized cages paves the way for development of a new class of materials with a wide range of applications from electronics to biomedicine.