title: Rationally engineering natural protein assemblies in nanobiotechnology.
abstract: Multimeric protein assemblies are essential components in viruses, bacteria, eukaryotic cells, and organisms where they act as cytoskeletal scaffold, storage containers, or for directional transport. The bottom-up structures can be exploited in nanobiotechnology by harnessing their built-in properties and combining them with new functional modules. This review summarizes the design principles of natural protein assemblies, highlights recent progress in their structural elucidation, and shows how rational engineering can create new biomaterials for applications in vaccine development, biocatalysis, materials science, and synthetic biology.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University College London, London WC1H 0AJ, UK. s.howorka@ucl.ac.uk
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Howorka
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001672:Biocompatible Materials / Q000737:chemistry; D006801:Humans; D015202:Protein Engineering; D055503:Protein Multimerization; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry*; D058615:Synthetic Biology
chemical_list: D001672:Biocompatible Materials; D011506:Proteins