Computationally designed synergistic protein-nanoparticle assemblies

University Of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

With this award, the Macromolecular, Supramolecular and Nanochemistry Program in the Division of Chemistry is funding Professors Ivan Dmochowski and Jeffrey Saven at the University of Pennsylvania to study nanoparticles and their interactions with proteins. Nanoparticles are used in a wide variety of applications, from biomedical diagnostics to consumer electronics. The colors and electronic properties of these systems depend on their sizes and compositions. The isolation of particles having targeted sizes and properties, as well as making such particles more "bio-friendly", remain bottlenecks to further study and application. This project targets the design and creation of stable, mutually compatible protein-nanoparticle systems through control of protein-protein interactions at the nanoparticle surface. These studies seek to provide general design principles for controlling interactions at protein-inorganic nanomaterial interfaces, principles that could have broad applicability in nanotechnology, materials science and biomedicine. Graduate students, undergraduates, and summer research students will be trained in a multi-disciplinary environment combining experimental and computational approaches. Lectures and laboratory exercises will be developed to engage high school participants in a summer program that features current research involving bio-nanotechnology, bioinorganic and computational chemistry. Ferritin proteins will be designed to form stable, reversible, and native-like assemblies with inorganic nanoparticles. A long-term goal is to selectively encapsulate and separate nanoparticles, for example, fluorescent CdSe (cadmium selenide) quantum dots or Au, Ag, and Pt nanoparticles,based on their size, surface ligands, or composition. In Aim 1, variants of stable ferritin oligomers will be computationally designed to understand the assembly process and to accelerate formation of the 24mer holoprotein. In Aim 2, the interaction of these designed proteins with inorganic nanoparticles will be investigated to characterize stability and propensities for rapid and selective nanoparticle encapsulation. The design of these ferritins aims to expand the range of inorganic materials that can be stably and selectively encapsulated.