Rational Design of Programmable Monodisperse Semi-Synthetic Protein Nanomaterials Containing Engineered Disulfide Functionality

Abstract

The reversible nature of disulfide functionality has been exploited to design intelligent materials such as nanocapsules, micelles, vesicles, inorganic nanoparticles, peptide and nucleic acid nanodevices. However, to our knowledge, there are no reports on design of semi-synthetic protein assemblies containing an engineered disulfide bond. Towards that end, herein, we disclose a new chemical methodology for the construction redox-sensitive protein assemblies using monodisperse facially amphiphilic protein-dendron bioconjugates. The disulfide functionality is strategically placed between the dendron and protein domains. The custom designed bioconjugates self-assembled into nanoscopic objects of a defined size dictated by the nature of dendron domain. The stimuli-responsive behavior of the protein assemblies is demonstrated using a suitable redox trigger.