Biologically templated organic polymers with nanoscale order

Abstract

Methods for the construction of ordered nanoscale arrays have been implicated in fields ranging from separation technologies to microelectronics. Yet, despite the plethora of nanoscale structures assembled in nature that use a templating strategy, chemists have been unable to replicate this success. A technology is reported for templated organic polymers composed of filamentous bacteriophage-polyacrylamide biomacromolecules that self-assemble into highly ordered helical bundles displaying hexagonal close packing. The results align with a previously reported mathematical prediction for the close packing of flexible tubes. This biopolymeric assembly can be viewed as a magnification of the inherent microscopic chirality and helicity present in individual phage particles at the macroscale level.bacteriophage ͉ nanopores ͉ polyacrylamide N ature synthesizes a large repertoire of highly ordered nanoscale structures from a limited subset of molecules. However, chemists have not matched this success even though a much larger set of reagents and reactions are available at their disposal. This is particularly evident for organic polymers where construction of materials with ordered nanopores remains elusive (1). In many instances, nature's main device to overcome the inherent entropic barrier for assembly is the use of a template to preorganize an array of chemicals that react to form biological polymers such as nucleic acids and proteins. Ultimately, nanoscale assemblies are formed from homologous or heterologous sets of these polymers. We reasoned that similarly ordered organic polymers could be biomimetically prepared by using a templating approach. Filamentous bacteriophage M13 was chosen as a template given that such virions can form liquid crystals and ordered two-dimensional films (2, 3). Structurally, bacteriophage M13 is a rigid helical rod Ϸ930 nm in length and 6.5 nm in diameter. The shaft of the rod consists of Ϸ2,700 copies of a single helical protein (pVIII) of 50 aa where one end contains five copies of a protein critical for binding to the bacterial cell host (pIII) and the other end contains five copies of two different proteins (pVII and pIX) consisting of 33 aa and 32 aa, respectively. All of these proteins can be used to express large numbers of antibodies and peptides on the phage surface (4). By using this strategy, we now report a technology for templated organic polymers composed of filamentous bacteriophage-polyacrylamide biomacromolecules that self-assemble into highly ordered helical bundles displaying classical hexagonal close packing with remarkable physical properties. Results and DiscussionAlthough protein-polymer bioconjugates are widespread in drug development, their use in the design of new materials is much less common. The traditional approach to the preparation of protein-polymer bioconjugates has been the coupling of two macromolecules postpolymerization. In such cases, the polymer is activated with amine-or thiol-reactive functional groups for reaction with such amino acids as lysine...

Tuning chirality in the self-assembly of rod-like viruses by chemical surface modifications

“…This scenario is supported by a recent report where a chiral lamentous virus, M13, a close mimic of the fd virus, seems to exhibit a rough helical contour shape with a pitch 290 nm aer being chemically trapped in a polymeric gel. 45 Alternatively, an electrostatic based model supported by experiments and proposed by Tombolato et al points out that the steric helical arrangement of the coat proteins and the resulting helical distribution of surface charges on the virus can promote twist with opposite handedness. The balance between the steric and the electrostatic contributions is very sensitive to the details of each particle structure, and more specically to the location of the charges on the virus surface.…”

The iPlant Collaborative: Cyberinfrastructure for Plant Biology

“…Phylogenetic methods are being used to identify and predict responses to a changing global climate (Yesson and Culham, 2006a,b; Faith, 2008; Willis et al, 2008; Donoghue et al, 2009; Hendry et al, 2010; Thuiller et al, 2011). …”

A possibility of polaron vortex magnet of polypyrrole prepared in virus liquid crystal

“…The chirality of a virus can be tuned with chemical modification 2 . The fd phage/conjugated polymer composite was investigated, and a cube of phage‐polymer was realized 3 . Virus‐based piezoelectric energy generation, 4 virus/polyethylenedioxythiophene (PEDOT) nanowires for bio sensors, 5 conducting polymers bearing human influenza‐sensing function, 6 conducting polymer‐based COVID‐19 detector, 7 high thermal diffusivity in filamentous M13 phage, 8 virus‐based fabrictions, 9 fabrication of virus fibers, bioactive hydrogels, 10 and chemically modified viruses, 11 have been reported.…”