De novo protein design has been historically used to validate the principles governing the process of biomolecular folding and assembly. However, de novo design of proteins and peptides from physical principles may have an even greater impact when applied to recognizing and organizing nanostructures. I demonstrate that nano-bio hybrid structures can be engineered to assemble in a structurally-specific manner, and this presents a promising way of addressing current limitations in nanoscale assembly1. In this talk, I will introduce protein chemistry based on computational design to successfully engineer a series of hybrid structures composed of nanomaterials and artificial proteins. In addition, this talk will describe general rules for designing peptides that recognize surface lattices and further self-associate to achieve superstructure – major progress in the field of nano-assembly1,2. This novel methodology for the construction of nano-bio hybrid materials, as well as the unique structural motifs for this purpose that we identified, suggest a promising role for biomedical applications such as brain imaging and protein drug.
References
1. Gevorg Grigoryan*, Yong Ho Kim*, Rudresh Acharya, Kevin Axelrod, Rishabh M. Jain, Lauren Willis, Marija Drndic, James M. Kikkawa, and William F. DeGrado, “Computational Design of Virus-like Protein Assemblies on Carbon Nanotube Surfaces” Science 2011, 332, 1071-1076. *- Authors contributed equally
2. Ivan V. Korendovych, Yong Ho Kim, Andrew H. Ryan, James D. Lear, William F. DeGrado, and Scott J. Shandler, Organic Letters 2010, 12, 5142.