Shape adaptable, non-centrosymmetric viral scaffolds for assembly of self-propelled nanomaterials

非技术总结：合成游泳者已被越来越多地探索。这些非凡的自我推进材料可以将化学能或光能转化为运动，增加混合和加速化学反应。颗粒组成的不对称使运动能够通过反应产物的局部积聚，而颗粒大小和几何形状控制速度和方向性。虽然尺寸为100纳米或微米的电机已经被广泛研究，但由于制造难度大，100纳米以下的电机在很大程度上被忽视了。这项研究将利用病毒生物材料的专家制造能力来克服这些制造挑战。这种组装策略的发展将使重要的生物医学、传感和环境修复应用所必需的空间和地形控制成为可能。这项研究将支持指导和拓展活动，以激励、招募和培训一群不同的科学家和工程师。这些活动将加强对研究生、本科生和中学生的教育。技术概述：病毒纳米颗粒是单分散、自组装的生物材料。它们的结构和化学，包括确切的形状和特定位点的功能基团，都是基因编码的，并且是精确的。该项目的目标是创建一个具有破对称的形状变化病毒模板，能够作为设计和合成不对称功能纳米材料的平台。这项工作将侧重于利用转化后的病毒模板的大小和形状来操纵基于病毒纳米粒子的纳米游泳者的运动。通过短暂的有机溶剂暴露，病毒几何形状将从长丝转变为棒状，再转变为球状。在这些极端的尺寸变化和侧链包装转变之后，将评估表面暴露残留物的差异。此外，还将研究n端氨基酸侧链特征对溶剂基转化的影响，以及形状修饰支架的大小和稳定性。形状改变后的病毒表面化学均匀性降低，将用于合成或组装非中心对称的自电泳和光诱导的自电泳纳米颗粒基纳米游泳者。病毒模板纳米颗粒的轨迹将被探索，旋转和平移扩散系数测量，运动与纳米材料的大小和形状相关。提出的研究将提高对丝状病毒几何可调性和粒子运动相关的结构-功能关系的基本理解；深入了解生物分子与非中心对称纳米结构形成的相互作用和控制；通过对模板大小和形状的精确控制，增强病毒模板纳米颗粒的运动。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Non-technical Summary: Synthetic swimmers have been increasingly explored. These remarkable self-propelled materials can convert chemical or light energy into locomotion, increasing mixing and accelerating chemical reactions. Asymmetry in particle composition enables movement through a local build-up of reaction products, whereas particle size and geometry control speed and directionality. While motors with dimensions of 100s of nanometers or microns have been widely studied, sub-100 nm devices have been largely neglected because they are harder to make. This research will use the expert manufacturing capabilities of viral biomaterials to overcome these fabrication challenges. The development of such an assembly strategy will enable the spatial and topographical control essential for important biomedical, sensing, and environmental remediation applications. This research will support both mentoring and outreach activities to inspire, recruit, and train a diverse group of scientists and engineers. These activities will strengthen the education of graduate, undergraduate, and middle students.Technical Summary: Viral nanoparticles are monodisperse, self-assembled biomaterials. Their structure and chemistry, including exact shape and site-specific functional groups, is genetically encoded and known with precision. The project objective is to create a shape-changing viral template with broken symmetry that is capable of serving as a platform with which to design and synthesize asymmetric functional nanomaterials. The proposed work will focus on using the size and shape of the transformed viral templates to manipulate the motion of viral nanoparticle-based nanoswimmers. Viral geometry will be converted from filament to rod to spheroid through brief organic solvent exposure. Following these extreme dimensional changes and sidechain packing transitions, differences in surface exposed residues will be evaluated. In addition, the effect of N-terminal amino acid sidechain character on solvent-based transformation, as well as the size and stability of the shape-modified scaffold will be studied. The reduced surface chemistry homogeneity of the shape-changed viruses will be used to synthesize or assemble non-centrosymmetric self-electrophoretic and light-induced self-electrophoretic nanoparticle-based nanoswimmers. Viral-templated nanoparticle trajectory will be explored, rotational and translational diffusion coefficients measured, and motion correlated with nanomaterial size and shape. The proposed studies will improve fundamental understanding of the structure-function relationship associated with geometric tunability of the filamentous virus and particle motion; advance knowledge of biomolecule interactions with and control over non-centrosymmetric nanostructure formation; and enhance viral-templated nanoparticle motion through precise control over template size and shape.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.