Artificial Protein Cage with Unusual Geometry and Regularly Embedded Gold Nanoparticles.
Nano Lett
; 22(8): 3187-3195, 2022 04 27.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-35254086
ABSTRACT
Artificial protein cages have great potential in a number of areas including cargo capture and delivery and as artificial vaccines. Here, we investigate an artificial protein cage whose assembly is triggered by gold nanoparticles. Using biochemical and biophysical methods we were able to determine both the mechanical properties and the gross compositional features of the cage which, combined with mathematical models and biophysical data, allowed the structure of the cage to be predicted. The accuracy of the overall geometrical prediction was confirmed by the cryo-EM structure determined to sub-5 Å resolution. This showed the cage to be nonregular but similar to a dodecahedron, being constructed from 12 11-membered rings. Surprisingly, the structure revealed that the cage also contained a single, small gold nanoparticle at each 3-fold axis meaning that each cage acts as a synthetic framework for regular arrangement of 20 gold nanoparticles in a three-dimensional lattice.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Nanoparticles
/
Metal Nanoparticles
Type of study:
Prognostic_studies
Language:
En
Journal:
Nano Lett
Year:
2022
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Poland