Complete and cooperative in vitro assembly of computationally designed self-assembling protein nanomaterials

Adam J. Wargacki, Tobias P. Wörner, Michiel Waterbeemd, Daniel Ellis, Albert J. R. Heck and Neil P. King ()
Additional contact information
Adam J. Wargacki: University of Washington
Tobias P. Wörner: Utrecht University
Michiel Waterbeemd: Utrecht University
Daniel Ellis: University of Washington
Albert J. R. Heck: Utrecht University
Neil P. King: University of Washington

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Abstract Recent advances in computational methods have enabled the predictive design of self-assembling protein nanomaterials with atomic-level accuracy. These design strategies focus exclusively on a single target structure, without consideration of the mechanism or dynamics of assembly. However, understanding the assembly process, and in particular its robustness to perturbation, will be critical for translating this class of materials into useful technologies. Here we investigate the assembly of two computationally designed, 120-subunit icosahedral complexes in detail using several complementary biochemical methods. We found that assembly of each material from its two constituent protein building blocks was highly cooperative and yielded exclusively complete, 120-subunit complexes except in one non-stoichiometric regime for one of the materials. Our results suggest that in vitro assembly provides a robust and controllable route for the manufacture of designed protein nanomaterials and confirm that cooperative assembly can be an intrinsic, rather than evolved, feature of hierarchically structured protein complexes.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21251-y Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-21251-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-21251-y

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().