Asymmetric bifunctional protein nanoparticles through redesign of self-assembly

We have been using DNA self-assembly for a while now. DNA-origami is a wonderful technique to build nanoscopic optical breadboards for our experiments. While DNA is highly versatile, it has the disadvantage of being fluffy… In fact, life uses proteins to build stuff, not DNA. So why not trying to direct protein self-assembly to build nanoscopic objects by design? It turns out that directing protein self-assembly is way more complicated than for DNA. Nevertheless, it can be done. We show a nice example in our recent paper in Nanoscale Advances, where the protein BLS was modified to incorporate specific mutations that allow the asymmetric assembly of protein nanoparticles.

This work was led by our cooperation partners in the group of  Molecular Immunology and Microbiology directed by Prof. Dr. Fernando Goldbaum at Fundación Instituto Leloir.

Nanoscale Advances 1 (2019) 1833-1846

“Asymmetric bifunctional protein nanoparticles through redesign of self-assembly”

Santiago Sosa, Andres H. Rossi, Alan M. Szalai, Sebastian Klinke, Jimena Rinaldi, Ana Farias, Paula M. Berguer, Alejandro D. Nadra, Fernando D. Stefani, Fernando A. Goldbaum and Hernan R. Bonomi