Tuesday 27 May 2014

Symmetric protein nanomaterials from novel co-assembling protein subunits

A run of protein-based materials papers (excluding yesterday’s dialysis paper).  Apologies for this – I do try to be diverse in content.  But this one is from my own journal Nature so I couldn’t resist.  Here it is.

Researchers have described the precise self-assembly of protein nanomaterials from two novel co-assembling protein subunits.  Computational methods were used to predict amino acid sequences (one for each subunit) which would stabilize the interfaces between the folded subunits and drive assembly of multiple copies into a specific symmetric architecture.  The researchers experimentally verified the computational methods by fabricating five different two-component co-asssembled nanomaterials each forming one of two targeted tetrahedral architectures.

Accurate design of co-assembling multi-component protein nanomaterials; N.P. King et al; Nature AOP; doi:10.1038/nature13404



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