Virus-Based Devices: Prospects for Allopoiesis

Abstract

The assembly line is a commonly invoked example of allopoiesis, the process whereby a system produces a different system than itself. In this sense, virus production in plants is an instance of bio-enabled bottom-up allopoiesis because the plant host can be regarded as a programmable assembly line for the virus. Reprogramming this assembly line and integrating it into a larger lineup of chemical manipulations has seen a flurry of activity recently, with more sophisticated systems emerging every year. The field of virus nanomaterials now has several subdisciplines that focus on virus shells as assemblers, scaffolds for molecular circuitry, chemical reactors, magnetic and photonic beacons, and therapeutic carriers. A case in point is the work reported by Brillault et al. in this issue of ACS Nano. They show how two types of animal virus coat proteins can be simultaneously expressed and efficiently assembled in plants into a complex virus-like particle of well-defined stoichiometry and composition. Such advances, combined with the promise of scalability and sustainability afforded by plants, paint a bright picture for the future of high-performance virus-based nanomaterials.

Virus Assembly Pathways: Straying Away but Not Too Far

“…A deeper understanding of their assembly mechanisms could lead to design principles for novel antivirals, [1,2] and facilitate the development of a range of useful viromimetic nanoparticles. [3,4] The viral genome plays an active role in assembly. [5] It recruits coat proteins (CPs) that ultimately package the RNA spontaneously by self-organizing into a symmetric, protective shell.…”

From stars to stripes: RNA‐directed shaping of plant viral protein templates—structural synthetic virology for smart biohybrid nanostructures

“…Supramolecular protein structures comprise numerous different assemblies with shapes determined by the own natural or engineered protein constituents, or—alternatively—by organic or inorganic nonprotein cargo and linkers. Such protein‐based structures include, among others, apoferritin (Calò, Eiben, Okuda, & Bittner, ), clathrin (Krajina, Proctor, Schoen, Spakowitz, & Heilshorn, ), cellular microcompartments (Plegaria & Kerfeld, ), or virus‐like particle (VLP)‐based nanocages and elongated scaffolds (e.g., Aumiller, Uchida, & Douglas, ; Chen et al, ; Dragnea, ; Eiben et al, ; Koch et al, ; L. Wang et al, ; Wege & Lomonossoff, ; see more references in 1.3). Extensive 2D lattices may form for example, from bacterial surface‐(S‐)‐layer proteins (SLPs) (Farjadian et al, ; Ilk, Egelseer, & Sleytr, ), and elongated fibers from synthetic or natural peptides, proteins like collagen, keratin or silk fibroins, and protein domains (Aigner, DeSimone, & Scheibel, ; Luo et al, ; Pieters, van Eldijk, Nolte, & Mecinović, ).…”

Field-Effect Sensors for Virus Detection: From Ebola to SARS-CoV-2 and Plant Viral Enhancers

“…In this review, recent advances and key developments in the field of label-free detection of viruses (including plant viruses) with various types of BioFEDs are presented. Plant viruses are additionally introduced as promising bionanotools and building blocks of smart materials (e.g., Mao et al, 2009;Culver et al, 2015;Khudyakov and Pumpens, 2016;Koch et al, 2016;Wen and Steinmetz, 2016;Dragnea, 2017;Steele et al, 2017;Chu et al, 2018a;Lomonossoff, 2018;Lomonossoff and Wege, 2018;Wege and Lomonossoff, 2018;Chen et al, 2019;Eiben et al, 2019;Wege and Koch, 2020;Wen et al, 2020) that may bring about novel options for biosensor technology if applied as model particles, signal-amplifying colloids or, most importantly, multivalent adapter templates for the high surface-density presentation of detector components.…”