Self-Assembling Material Inspired by Protein Capsids

Innovation: Academia

Northwestern University

2018

Image: Roberto Nickson / Unsplash / CC BY SA - Creative Commons Attribution + ShareAlike

Chemically Assemble Polymers

We might think that complex polymers are the result of human industrial ingenuity, but nature cornered the market on polymers billions of years earlier. Examples of biopolymers are proteins, carbohydrates, and genetic material. In contrast to human industrial processes, within a cell, ribosomes covalently bond amino acids together to form proteins.

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Material from Northwestern University is a hydrogel that self-assembles utilizing the strong noncovalent interactions between its molecules.

Benefits

Reversible
Biocompatible
Tunable

Applications

Medical treatment
Robotics
Drug delivery

UN Sustainable Development Goals Addressed

Goal 9: Industry Innovation & Infrastructure

The Challenge

Many materials have a static set of properties that do not change throughout their usable life. Dynamic materials that can change their properties could open the door for novel inventions in many applications.

Innovation Details

The material is composed of molecules made of peptides and other molecules made of peptides and DNA. When mixed together, they form water-soluble nanoscale filaments that then form a soft hydrogel. This hydrogel becomes stiffer as hierarchical superstructures form. When a DNA molecule is added, it disrupts the interconnected filaments, and the structure returns back to its softer state. The material can reorganize on-demand to dynamically change its properties.

Biomimicry Story

Capsids, the containers that house viral DNA, are stable, self‑assembling structures made of s. Their stability is due to the net strength that arises from weak attractive and repulsive forces that depend on the relative position of the proteins. The weak forces include attraction or repulsion between electrostatic charges, water solubility, and constituent structures in various parts of the capsid.

See Related Content

Biological Strategy

Capsid Proteins Self-assemble to Form Stable Shell

Capsids, the containers housing viral DNA, are stable, self-assembling structures because they rely on the net strength afforded by a combination of weak attractive or repulsive forces arising from the relative position of proteins making up the container

References

Journal article

Reversible self-assembly of superstructured networks

Science

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Reference

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