Construction
of magnetotactic materials is a significant challenge
in nanotechnology applications such as nanodevices and nanotransportation.
Artificial magnetotactic materials can be designed from magnetotactic
bacteria because these bacteria use magnetic nanoparticles for aligning
with and moving within magnetic fields. Microtubules are attractive
scaffolds to construct magnetotactic materials because of their intrinsic
motility. Nonetheless, it is challenging to magnetically control their
orientation while retaining their motility by conjugating magnetic
nanoparticles on their outer surface. Here we solve the issue by encapsulating
magnetic cobalt–platinum nanoparticles inside microtubules
using our developed Tau-derived peptide that binds to their internal
pockets. The in situ growth of cobalt–platinum
nanoparticles resulted in the formation of a linear-chain assembly
of nanoparticles inside the microtubules. The magnetic microtubules
significantly aligned with a high order parameter (0.71) along the
weak magnetic field (0.37 T) and showed increased motility. This work
provides a new concept for designing magnetotactic materials.
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