Tobacco Mosaic Virus as a Versatile Platform for Molecular Assembly and Device Fabrication

Abstract

Viruses are unique biological agents that infect living host cells through molecular delivery of a genomic cargo. Over the past two decades advancements in genetic engineering and bioconjugation technologies have allowed the unprecedented use of these “unfriendly” biological molecules, as nanoscopic platforms for the advancement of an array of nanotechnology applications. This mini‐review focuses on providing a brief summary of key demonstrations leveraging the versatile characteristics of Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) for molecular assembly and bio‐device integration. A comprehensive discussion of genetic and chemical modification strategies along with potential limiting factors that impact the assembly of these macromolecules is presented to provide useful insights for adapting TMV as a potentially universal platform toward developing advanced nanomaterials. Additional discussions on biofabrication techniques developed in parallel to enable immobilization, alignment, and patterning of TMV‐based functional particles on solid surfaces will highlight technological innovations that can be widely adapted for creating nanoscopic device components using these engineered biomacromolecules. Further exploitation in the design of molecular specificity and assembly mechanisms and the development of highly controllable and scalable TMV‐device integration strategies will expand the library of nanoscale engineering tools that can be used for the further development of virus‐based nanotechnology platforms.

From stars to stripes: RNA‐directed shaping of plant viral protein templates—structural synthetic virology for smart biohybrid nanostructures

“…Hence, plant viruses have developed into one of the major classes of biological carrier templates so that all of their features described up to here have been reviewed extensively and repeatedly. For a more complete survey on looming plant VNP applications, the reader is referred to book chapters and articles that list appropriate original references, and specific recent reviews (e.g., Aljabali et al, ; Chu, Brown, Culver, & Ghodssi, ; Culver et al, ; Czapar & Steinmetz, ; Eiben et al, ; Fan et al, ; Koch et al, ; Lam & Steinmetz, ; K. L. Lee et al, ; Lomonossoff, ; Mao, Liu, & Cao, ; Steele et al, ; van Rijn & Schirhagl, ; Wege & Lomonossoff, ; Wen et al, ; Wen & Steinmetz, ). Instructive details on numerous of the underlying preparation and application procedures may be retrieved for example, from Khudyakov and Pumpens (); Lin and Ratna (); Steinmetz and Manchester (); Wege and Lomonossoff ().…”

Nucleocapsid Assembly of Baculoviruses

“…The assembly mechanism of viral nucleocapsids is very complex and varies between viruses, but most viruses generally adopt two main strategies. For most DNA and RNA viruses with genome sizes less than 20 kb, such as simian virus 40 (a small DNA virus) [7] and tobacco mosaic virus (a famous RNA virus) [8], the energy-independent system is used, where the nucleocapsid is assembled around the genome by free capsid proteins or subunits. On the contrary, large viruses tend to use the energy-dependent system, where the empty capsids are assembled, and then the genomic nucleic acids are recognized and pumped into the preformed capsids by ATP-driven motors.…”

Field-Effect Sensors for Virus Detection: From Ebola to SARS-CoV-2 and Plant Viral Enhancers

“…In this review, recent advances and key developments in the field of label-free detection of viruses (including plant viruses) with various types of BioFEDs are presented. Plant viruses are additionally introduced as promising bionanotools and building blocks of smart materials (e.g., Mao et al, 2009;Culver et al, 2015;Khudyakov and Pumpens, 2016;Koch et al, 2016;Wen and Steinmetz, 2016;Dragnea, 2017;Steele et al, 2017;Chu et al, 2018a;Lomonossoff, 2018;Lomonossoff and Wege, 2018;Wege and Lomonossoff, 2018;Chen et al, 2019;Eiben et al, 2019;Wege and Koch, 2020;Wen et al, 2020) that may bring about novel options for biosensor technology if applied as model particles, signal-amplifying colloids or, most importantly, multivalent adapter templates for the high surface-density presentation of detector components.…”