Disulfide Bond: Dramatically Enhanced Assembly Capability and Structural Stability of Tobacco Mosaic Virus Nanorods

Abstract

Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) is a classical viral nanoarchitecture that has been extensively employed as a promising template for the fabrication of novel nanomaterials and nanostructures. Despite being an ideal source, the Escherichia coli -derived TMV nanorod is suffering from tenuous assembly capability and stability. Inspired by the disulfide bond widely employed in biosystems, here we rationally introduce a cysteine into TMV coat protein (TMV-CP) to enable disulfide bond formation between adjacent subunits, thereby radically altering the behaviors of original noncovalent assembling system of wild type TMV-CP. The dramatically enhanced self-assembly capability and stability of the engineered TMV nanorods are observed and the essential roles of disulfide bonds are verified, illustrating a promising strategy to obtain desired genetic-modified nanorods that are inaccessible in plants. We expect this work will benefit the development of TMV-based nanotechnology and encourage the utilization of disulfide bonds in other biomacromolecules for improved properties as nanoscaffolds.

Plant virus directed fabrication of nanoscale materials and devices

“…Bacterial expressed and purified CPs showed altered assembly profiles, forming hexagonal disk arrays and rafts of elongated rods whose assembly could be controlled by the concentration of nickelnitrilotriacetic acid. In a subsequent study a novel cysteine residue introduced at position 103 in the inner loop of the TMV CP was found to drive virus-like rod assembly by disulfide formation between apposing CP subunits (Zhou et al, 2013). Redox driven disulfide bond formation between the 103 subunits was sufficient to stabilize CP assembly into virion-like rods.…”

Virus-templated FRET platform for the rational design of ratiometric fluorescent nanosensors

“…1 Based on the mechanism of FRET, a series of novel light-harvesting systems, chemosensors and bioprobes have been developed recently. [2][3][4] Conventional FRET-based probes have 15 been designed in the form of small-molecular dyads, where the donor and acceptor fluorophores are connected by an appropriate linker. Recently, FRET mechanism has been adapted for the fabrication of nanoparticle-based probes (i.e.…”

“…[34][35][36][37] Thus, monitoring of pH distribution and 5 fluctuation with high temporal-spatial resolution in living systems is of great importance for understanding of the relationship between the pH and cell activities, as well as early diagnosis and treatment of diseases. 38 15 The fluorescence spectra of M13-β-CD/Ada-FITC/Ada-RhB with varied pH values when excited at 450 nm are shown in Fig. 2A.…”

Learning from nature – Novel synthetic biology approaches for biomaterial design

“…In its simplest incarnation, TMV virus-like particles were stabilized by the introduction of one cysteine point mutation in the capsid protein (T103C), resulting in much greater resistance to pH variation and reductive denaturation [91]. The cell-free expression technology of Schwartz was also used to control intra-particle disulfide formation [92].…”