Computationally designed synergistic protein-nanoparticle assemblies

化学系的大分子、超分子和纳米化学项目将资助宾夕法尼亚大学的Ivan Dmochowski教授和Jeffrey Saven教授研究纳米颗粒及其与蛋白质的相互作用。纳米颗粒被广泛应用于从生物医学诊断到消费电子产品的各种应用中。这些系统的颜色和电子特性取决于它们的大小和组成。分离具有目标尺寸和特性的颗粒，以及使这些颗粒更加“生物友好”，仍然是进一步研究和应用的瓶颈。该项目旨在通过控制纳米颗粒表面的蛋白质-蛋白质相互作用，设计和创造稳定、相互兼容的蛋白质-纳米颗粒系统。这些研究试图提供控制蛋白质-无机纳米材料界面相互作用的一般设计原则，这些原则可能在纳米技术、材料科学和生物医学中具有广泛的适用性。研究生、本科生和暑期研究生将在结合实验和计算方法的多学科环境中接受训练。讲座和实验练习将被开发出来，以吸引高中参与者参加一个暑期项目，该项目以生物纳米技术、生物无机化学和计算化学的最新研究为特色。铁蛋白将被设计成与无机纳米粒子形成稳定的、可逆的和天然的类似组装体。长期目标是选择性地封装和分离纳米颗粒，例如，荧光CdSe（硒化镉）量子点或Au， Ag和Pt纳米颗粒，基于它们的大小，表面配体或组成。在Aim 1中，将通过计算设计稳定的铁蛋白低聚物的变体，以了解组装过程并加速24mer全蛋白的形成。在目标2中，将研究这些设计的蛋白质与无机纳米颗粒的相互作用，以表征快速和选择性纳米颗粒封装的稳定性和倾向。这些铁蛋白的设计旨在扩大可稳定和选择性封装的无机材料的范围。

With this award, the Macromolecular, Supramolecular and Nanochemistry Program in the Division of Chemistry is funding Professors Ivan Dmochowski and Jeffrey Saven at the University of Pennsylvania to study nanoparticles and their interactions with proteins. Nanoparticles are used in a wide variety of applications, from biomedical diagnostics to consumer electronics. The colors and electronic properties of these systems depend on their sizes and compositions. The isolation of particles having targeted sizes and properties, as well as making such particles more "bio-friendly", remain bottlenecks to further study and application. This project targets the design and creation of stable, mutually compatible protein-nanoparticle systems through control of protein-protein interactions at the nanoparticle surface. These studies seek to provide general design principles for controlling interactions at protein-inorganic nanomaterial interfaces, principles that could have broad applicability in nanotechnology, materials science and biomedicine. Graduate students, undergraduates, and summer research students will be trained in a multi-disciplinary environment combining experimental and computational approaches. Lectures and laboratory exercises will be developed to engage high school participants in a summer program that features current research involving bio-nanotechnology, bioinorganic and computational chemistry. Ferritin proteins will be designed to form stable, reversible, and native-like assemblies with inorganic nanoparticles. A long-term goal is to selectively encapsulate and separate nanoparticles, for example, fluorescent CdSe (cadmium selenide) quantum dots or Au, Ag, and Pt nanoparticles,based on their size, surface ligands, or composition. In Aim 1, variants of stable ferritin oligomers will be computationally designed to understand the assembly process and to accelerate formation of the 24mer holoprotein. In Aim 2, the interaction of these designed proteins with inorganic nanoparticles will be investigated to characterize stability and propensities for rapid and selective nanoparticle encapsulation. The design of these ferritins aims to expand the range of inorganic materials that can be stably and selectively encapsulated.