Understanding and engineering hydrophobin self-assembly

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Protein self-assembly plays many essential roles in nature and presents new opportunities to develop biomaterials. One family of self-assembling proteins are hydrophobins, which are small globular proteins produced by filamentous fungi to modify their environment. Secreted hydrophobins behave like detergents and can change shape to form rodlets, which are an extremely durable and water repellent coating over aerial hyphae and spores. The unusual biochemical properties of hydrophobins have generated interest in developing them for commercial applications as emulsifiers, foam stabilizers and as an agent to protect and modify surfaces.